Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“And some day I’ll be in my tomb,” thought Dennis, bitterly, “and she’ll find a man can keep her quiet.”

When they were in bed Rosaleen took his head on her shoulder. “Dennis, I could cry for the wink of an eyelash. When I think how happy we were that wedding day.”

“From the way you carried on,” said Dennis, feeling very sly all of a sudden on that brandy, “I thought different.”

“Go to sleep,” said Rosaleen, prudishly. “That’s no way to talk.”

Dennis’ head fell back like a bag of sand on the pillow. Rosaleen could not sleep, and lay thinking about marriage; not her own, for once you’ve given your word there’s nothing to think about in it, but all other kinds of marriages, unhappy ones: where the husband drinks, or won’t work, or mistreats his wife and the children. Where the wife runs away from home, or spoils the children or neglects them, or turns a perfect strumpet and flirts with other men: where a woman marries a man too young for her, and he feels cheated and strays after other women till it’s just a disgrace: or take when a young girl marries an old man, even if he has money she’s bound to be disappointed some way. If Dennis hadn’t been such a good man, God knows what might have come out of it. She was lucky. It would break your heart to dwell on it. Her black mood closed down on her and she wanted to walk the floor holding her head and remembering every unhappy thing in the world. She had had nothing but disasters, one after another, and she couldn’t get over them, no matter how long ago they happened. Once she had let entirely the wrong man kiss her, she had almost got into bad trouble with him, and even now her heart stopped on her when she thought how near she’d come to being a girl with no character. There was the Billy-cat and his good heart and his sad death, and it was mixed up with the time her father had been knocked down, by a runaway horse, when the drink was in him, and the time when she had to wear mended stockings to a big ball because that sneaky Honora had stolen the only good ones.

She wished now she’d had a dozen children instead of the one that died in two days. This half-forgotten child suddenly lived again in her, she began to weep for him with all the freshness of her first agony; now he would be a fine grown man and the dear love of her heart. The image of him floated before her eyes plain as day, and became Kevin, painting the barn and the pig sty all colors of the rainbow, the brush swinging in his hand like a bell. He would work like a wild man for days and then lie for days under the trees, idle as a tramp. The darling, the darling lad like her own son. A painter by trade was a nice living, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him boarding around the country with the heathen Rooshans and Polacks and Wops with their liquor stills and their outlandish lingo. She said as much to Kevin.

“It’s not a Christian way to live, and you a good County Sligo boy.” So Kevin started to make jokes at her like any other Sligo boy. “I said to myself, that’s a County Mayo woman if ever I clapped eyes on one.” “Hold your tongue,” said Rosaleen softly as a dove. “You’re talking to a Sligo woman as if you didn’t know it!”

“Is it so?” said Kevin in great astonishment. “Well, I’m glad of the mistake. The Mayo people are too proud for me.” “And for me, too,” said Rosaleen. “They beat the world for holding up their chins about nothing.” “They do so,” said Kevin, “but the Sligo people have a right to be proud.” “And you’ve a right to live in a good Irish house,” said Rosaleen, “so you’d best come with us.” “I’d be proud of that as if I came from Mayo,” said Kevin, and he went on slapping paint on Rosaleen’s front gate. They stood there smiling at each other, feeling they had agreed enough, it was time to think of how to get the best of each other in the talk from now on. For more than a year they had tried to get the best of each other in the talk, and sometimes it was one and sometimes another, but a gay easy time and such a bubble of joy like a kettle singing. “You’ve been a sister to me, Rosaleen, I’ll not forget ye while I have breath.” He had said that the last night. Dennis muttered and snored a little. Rosaleen wanted to mourn about everything at the top of her voice, but it wouldn’t do to wake Dennis. He was sleeping like the dead after all that goose.

Rosaleen said, “Dennis, I dreamed about Kevin in the night. There was a grave, an old one, but with fresh flowers on it, and a name on the headstone cut very clear but as if it was in another language and I couldn’t make it out some way. You come up then and I said, ‘Dennis, what grave is this?’ and you answered me, ‘That’s Kevin’s grave, don’t you remember? And you put those flowers there yourself.’ Then I said, ‘Well, a grave it is then, and let’s not think of it any more.’ Now isn’t it strange to think Kevin’s been dead all this time and I didn’t know it?”

Dennis said, “He’s not fit to mention, going off as he did after all our kindness to him, and not a word from him.”

“It was because he hadn’t the power any more,” said Rosaleen. “And ye mustn’t be down on him now. I was wrong to put my judgment on him the way I did. Ah, but to think! Kevin dead and gone, and all these natives and foreigners living on, with the paint still on their barns and houses where Kevin put it! It’s very bitter.”

Grieving for Kevin, she drifted into thinking of the natives and foreigners who owned farms all around her. She was afraid for her life of them, she said, the way they looked at you out of their heathen faces, the foreigners bold as brass, the natives sly and mean. “The way they do be selling the drink to all, and burning each other in their beds and splitting each other’s heads with axes,” she complained. “The decent people aren’t safe in their houses.”

Yesterday she had seen that native Guy Richards going by wild-drunk again, fit to do any crime. He was a great offense to Rosaleen with his shaggy mustaches and his shirt in rags till the brawny skin showed through, a shame to the world, staring around with his sneering eyes; living by himself in a shack and having his cronies in for drink until you could hear them shouting at all hours and careering round the countryside like the devils from hell. He would pass by the house driving his bony gray horse at top speed, standing up in the rackety buggy singing in a voice like a power of scrap-iron falling, drunk as a lord before breakfast. Once when Rosaleen was standing in her doorway wearing a green checkerboard dress, he yelled at her: “Hey, Rosie, want to come for a ride?”

“The bold stump!” said Rosaleen to Dennis, “if ever he lays a finger on me I’ll shoot him dead.”

“If you mind your business by day,” said Dennis in a shrivelled voice, “and bar the doors well by night, there’ll be no call to shoot anybody.”

“Little you know!” said Rosaleen. She had a series of visions of Richards laying a finger on her and herself shooting him dead in his tracks. “Whatever would I do without ye, Dennis?” she asked him that night, as they sat on the steps in a soft darkness full of fireflies and the sound of crickets. “When I think of all the kinds of men there are in the world. That Richards!”

“When a man is young he likes his fun,” said Dennis amiably, beginning to yawn. “Young, is it?” said Rosaleen warm with anger. “The old crow! Fit to have children grown he is, the same as myself, and I’m a settled woman over her nonsense!” Dennis almost said, “I’ll never call you old,” but all at once he was irritable too. “Will you stop your gossiping?” he asked censoriously.

Rosaleen sat silent, without rancor, but there was no denying the old man was getting old, old. He got up as if he gathered his bones in his arms, and carried himself in the house. Somewhere inside of him there must be Dennis, but where? “The world is a wilderness,” she informed the crickets and frogs and fireflies.