Andrew Fox - Over Our Heads

Melissa was waiting for me in the hallway at the foot of the staircase, wearing only the mock-Victorian nightgown I’d bought for her the previous Christmas. Its hanging collar framed a hard nub of breastbone; its tail hit just above the jagged scar sunk into her left thigh — mark of a refusing mare and of a shattered femur that ached still whenever the barometer dropped.

‘They’re away at Mass, you know,’ she said, narrowing her eyes.

‘Are they, now?’ I said.

I watched Melissa climb the stairs, and for a moment — the fall of her feet, the flex of her calves — it was as though I were nineteen again and back in the fusty hallway of her Rathmines digs. My hands were sweating, I realized, not from the run but from her, as they had done back then — so much so, once, that I’d dropped the cheap bottle of red wine I’d spent half an hour selecting.

In the bedroom I found her naked, the nightdress flung on the floor. She stood in front of the full-length mirror squeezing the flesh at her ribs. I struggled out of my gear and crept across the room, but when Melissa felt me against her back she tensed.

‘Shower first,’ she said. ‘You stink.’

I reached my hands around her waist.

‘I thought you liked my stink.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ she laughed. ‘When did I say a thing like that?’

‘Before.’

‘Before! Before, I pretended to like a lot of things — before I knew better!’

‘Like what?’

‘Your singing.’

‘What else?’

‘Your dancing !’

‘Be honest, now, you like my dancing.’ And I danced, flesh slopping back and forth on its loose tethers to my bones.

Melissa turned and laid her hands on my chest. Her hair smelled of fruit.

‘I liked it in a boyfriend.’ She bit the corner of a smile. ‘But my husband will have to be a better dancer.’

‘Oh, really?’ I fumbled for her hips but she skittered away from me and disappeared into the wardrobe crammed with her teenage clothes. I planted my bare arse on her desk. ‘Well, then, maybe I’m just not husband material after all.’

‘If you say you’re not, you’re not.’ I heard the click of many hangers. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing: you’d better not embarrass me for our first dance.’

‘And if I do?’

‘Then I’ll be forced to get a divorce.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Clumsiness.’

‘ “Your honour, I can no longer in good conscience remain married to this man, for he is clumsy”?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Seems a bit extreme.’

‘It is what it is.’

Melissa emerged from the wardrobe holding in each hand a blue polka-dot party frock, nearly identical. She laid them both on the bed and turned to finger through the necklaces arranged on hooks in her travelling jewellery box. Her hand moved quickly, stopped, and rose to rub the notches at the base of her neck.

‘Have you seen my little Claddagh earrings?’

‘No,’ I sighed. ‘But I’m sure they’ll turn up. We’ll look for them after.’

‘After?’ In her eyes there was a glimmer of gleeful cruelty. ‘After what now, exactly?’

Whenever I stayed at Melissa’s parents’ house, I liked to take long showers in the screened, claw-footed tub. Then I’d sit on the toilet, leaf through the copies of Old Moore’s Almanac arranged on the cistern and study their alien world of weather lore and sheep dip. I rooted through the medicine cabinet to check the progress of Siobhán’s anxiety treatment, cracked the frosted window and looked out over moving fields. The sky above them was murderous but the fields were reconciled and quiet. I leaned my elbows on the window sill and endured for as long as I could.

The air in the kitchen was sharp with the tang of bleach and the tiles were tacky underfoot. Melissa’s eyes were riveted to the screen of the wall-mounted TV, where a grave-faced meteorologist laid hands on the country’s centre. At the opposite end of the room, Siobhán busied herself unloading things from shopping bags. The bite marks of elastic across her stomach made her look as though she’d been assembled in a hurry.

‘Need a hand, there?’ I asked and Melissa turned on me, her tongue a spike between crooked teeth.

‘No, you’re grand,’ Siobhán said.

Rain resumed its beat against the kitchen window. Water bubbled at the base of the sliding door. Outside, beneath the eaves of the milking shed, a herd of sheltering cattle moaned.

‘Squalling out there, ha Mel?’ Siobhán said, stacking beans on top of peas on top of corn.

Melissa studied the television.

‘Looks like,’ I said.

‘Melissa.’ Siobhán could not be deterred. ‘I forgot to tell you who I ran into — only Mary McConvey of all people. Has a voucher for glycolic peels over at Alchemy that Christy gave her for her birthday — subtlety, as ever, not exactly being Christy’s strong suit. Face on her of recent, to be honest, like a bumpy road. Herself and myself are considering one before the wedding. Interested?’

‘So, she’s coming too?’

Siobhán finished her task in silence. When everything was put away she made a beeline for me, took my stubbled jaw in her hand as she strode past and said:

‘You’ll do.’

I gathered breakfast things from the cupboards and seated myself beside Melissa. When I reached for the white plastic flower she’d pinned to the side of her head, she recoiled, her face pinched.

‘I’m not in the mood,’ she said.

What had happened, I knew, was what always happened: Melissa had fought with her mother out of fear and frustrated love. She wanted the reception to be elegant and intimate; Siobhán wanted to invite a mob of family and friends.

My head slid into my hands. The pulse in my thumb met that in my temple.

‘Okay, look,’ I said, ‘I mean, they are paying … Would it really be the end of the world —’

‘Stop defending her! You’re supposed to be on my side. When we’re married you’ll have to agree with me in everything, even when I’m wrong.’

I could see the full circumference of Melissa’s blue irises, the whites around them glaring.

‘Why even when you’re wrong?’

‘Because if I’m wrong then who the hell else is going to agree with me?’ She covered her face with her hands and mumbled, ‘Oh, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe this is all just a huge mistake. Maybe you’re not ready.’

I laid my hand between her warm shoulder blades.

‘Hey, hey, Mel,’ I said, ‘of course we should, you know we should. I agree with you, okay? And I’ll talk to your mother, okay?’

‘You don’t understand.’ Melissa’s voice had emptied out. ‘It’s none of those things. It’s everything.’

‘What do you mean everything?’

‘I mean everything.’

I took my hand from Melissa’s back and spooned a nugget of cereal towards my face.

Ciarán leaned over the banister and shouted, ‘Are we right there so, are we?’ He crossed his arms and frowned, lips rehearsing the shapes of words.

‘So, come here to me, so,’ he said, sidling closer but with his gaze still fixed on the banister’s carved volute. ‘Have you given any more thought to what we talked about the other night?’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’m really grateful. I’m sure we both are but —’

‘Say no more. You have your pride. You’re an eejit but I can understand that.’

Ciarán bent to inspect a flake of varnish. I watched him work it with a nail and thought about the smells of a thousand dinners breathing from the house’s pores. Siobhán appeared on the landing, tottering in heels.

‘Here’s Miss Ireland, now,’ Ciarán said.

‘He’s terrible,’ Siobhán beamed.