Don't hesitate--COME AT ONCE.
If you cannot come, send your sisters. So great is the demand that anything in skirts stands a chance. These men are all shy but willing. All prizes! No blanks. Hustle up now girls and don't miss this chance because some of you will never get another.
"I don't know, it's understood between us," Síle told Jael in the long, rain-spattered queue to get into a gig at Mother Redcap's. The friends were stuck behind a hen party from Liverpool in frilly skirts that said Kiss Me Arse, one of whom had just thrown up on the path.
"It's absurd," scoffed Jael. "What's it been, a grand total of two weekends together in the flesh? So why on earth would you grudge each other a bit of fun?"
Síle shivered in her little red lambskin jacket.
"And don't give me that I-only-have-eyes-for-her line." Jael hunched over a cigarette to light it in the wet breeze.
"Sorry, but it's true."
"You've always fancied so few people," said Jael disapprovingly.
"But it's not just that. Even if I did take a shine to somebody else—" She broke off, trying to find the right words. "The point is, if Jude and I aren't committed—"
"It's not a coincidence that that word means 'locked up in an asylum.'"
"You're the one who's bloody married," protested Síle.
"Exactly. Face pressed against the asylum window, waving at you, shouting Hold onto your liberty!"
"I thought you liked Jude."
"I'd have her on toast with jam and butter."
"I didn't mean—"
"I like her as a person and as a ride. I think both of you should enjoy your freedom."
"That's a meaningless word," Síle argued. "Put it this way, if Jude was just one of a number of possible lovers, then given the distance between us, given all the inconvenience, what would be the point?"
Jael released a plume of smoke from her nostrils like a dragon. "Sounds like all the hassle of being in a couple, and none of the pleasure."
"Well, it's true that LDRs depend on masturbation," said Síle under her breath.
Jael cackled, as the queue surged forward briefly. The rain began to thicken; the two of them squeezed farther into the lee of the building. For a minute, Síle couldn't even remember the name of the fiddler she was queueing up to see. These days, she was constantly distracted from her own life. "Can I ask you something?"
"No, I'm afraid not," said Jael, "a friendship of only fifteen years doesn't entitle you to ask questions."
Síle grinned. "I was just wondering why you went off women."
A brief pause. "Did I?"
"Didn't you?"
Jael stamped her cigarette out with one pointed boot. "I think I just met Anton. Ironic, isn't it, that I became a has-bian in the early nineties, just when the lot of Irish queers was about to improve?" She lit another. "Maybe I'll take it up again later, when he's dead of furry arteries. I'll cut a Vita Sackville-West swathe through the old-folks' home."
"So you didn't actually stop fancying them?" asked Síle.
"I didn't stop fancying anything," said Jael. "The night before our wedding, I told Anton that I'd tried monogamy and it didn't suit my complexion. I suspect he thought I was being funny. But the laugh's on me, as it turns out, because I've been far too busy and knackered. Nonmonogamy, we used to call it," she reminisced, "as if it was some philosophical principle, instead of simple sluttishness! Anyway, getting back to the fair sex, I'm sure they're grateful to have been spared my attentions."
Síle nodded. "You were a nasty lesbian," she risked saying. "You make a much better wife and mother."
Jael's mouth twitched. "Well, women bring out the worst in me, they're so fucking sensitive: rabbits in the headlights. Whereas Anton's such a rubber ball, whenever I try to crush him he just bounces up again."
Síle was trying to sleep in, after a four-day rotation, but the postman woke her with a padded envelope containing a cassette labeled, in Jude's careful script, Songs of Absence. She was overwhelmed with fond exasperation. "A tape! You're about three generations of technology behind," she told Jude on the phone.
"Do you like the mix, though?"
"Very much, despite the abysmal sound quality. It's like something out of a time capsule. I had to borrow Deirdre-next-door's boom box to play it on."
"What's your favorite?"
"It's a close tie between All by Myself' and 'Walking after Midnight.'"
"Mine is Ella doing 'Every Time We Say Good-bye,'" said Jude.
Something occurred to Síle. "Do you think all the best songs are songs of absence?"
Jude laughed. "There's certainly something to be said for it. No yawning together in front of the TV or squabbles over who forgot to buy milk."
They rang each other at any time of day or night they thought the other might be reachable and awake. They spoke from airports, in bed, or in the bath. (Síle had started taking occasional baths now, to remind her of Jude, and because there seemed more time to kill.) "This must be costing you a fortune, I'll ring you back," Síle would say, and Jude would answer, "It doesn't matter. What are you wearing?" Jude couldn't figure out which phone company offered the best rates. She didn't need a "Family 'n Friends!" discount package, she told Síle; she needed a special deal for "Obsessive Romance."
"Jude, I have to confess I've been staring at the phone and willing it to ring like some girl in a fifties film. Oh well, I suppose you're out, enjoying the hamlet's glittering nightlife? If you're in by midnight your time, you could try me but I may have gone to Italian by then. Big kiss..."
"Síle, really sorry, if I'd known you were going to call I'd have come home earlier, I was just having dinner with the Petersons next door..."
"Damn! I thought I'd catch you over breakfast today, but you've clearly headed off to the museum at the crack of dawn. You work far more hours than the board pays you for; I'm going to report you..."
"Oh sweetheart, I was just clippering my hair. The phone rang again a minute later, so I raced downstairs, but it wasn't you, it was somebody trying to sign me up for a diploma in accounting, so I've scattered hair all over the floor for nothing. Guess I better go get the broom, then there's some election signs I've got to hammer into the front lawn. This phone tag is getting slightly annoying."
"Slightly? I'm back, I was only in the supermarket replacing my rotting greens. Anytime before midnight's fine for ringing me back ... no, later's okay, actually, I can always get back to sleep..."
Sometimes they booked their calls in advance, which took some of the spontaneity out of it. Once Síle tried Jude repeatedly all Saturday and Sunday, working herself into a state of panic, before finally remembering that this was the weekend Jude was at a conference in Toronto called Southwestern Ontario's Past: The Way Forward.
They could never say good night or good morning without laughing at the incongruity of it, the dissonance. The timing was awful: Their biorhythms never matched. Sometimes Síle was going to bed, wanting to flirt sleepily, and Jude was frying garlic or dashing out to a meeting or off to play pool with Rizla. Sometimes over her porridge Jude tried Síle and caught her in crisp, busy mode at an airport. Once, insomniac at four in the morning, she called and got Síle making tea for an eighty-five-year-old neighbour who'd dropped in to use her scanner.
Out of sight, not out of mind, Síle told herself at solitary moments. This was like prayer, she supposed: talking in your head, keeping faith with the invisible.
Here and Now
All of your life
that has gone before,
All to come after it,
—so you ignore,
So you make perfect
the present
—ROBERT BROWNING
"Now!"
Toronto Pearson Airport in early July. Síle started to laugh as she ran through the sliding doors.
"Mm," said Jude at last, emerging from the curtain of hair. "Where's your baggage?"
Síle threw her arms up. "You're not going to believe this. Last night I got
in late from dinner with Orla at this new Lebanese place, and I swear I set my alarm in plenty of time, but it must have been P.M. rather than A.M., because it didn't go off! Such a beginner's mistake! In my dream I was at your funeral," she said, clutching at the sleeve of Jude's white T-shirt, "and I couldn't stop crying, and your friends—your mother was there too—they kept looking at me and whispering, 'Who's this gal? We've never seen her before in our lives.' And then the priest started banging on the coffin with the spade—"
"I was getting a Catholic burial?"
"Shut up, it's my dream," said Síle, kissing her neck. God, it was good to be here, no distance at all apart! "And of course the bang-bang was actually the taxi driver whamming away on my knocker. Thank god he did—he'd been there about ten minutes. I had to run downstairs in a towel—"
Jude grinned at the image.
"And I barely had time to throw this on," she said, looking down at her amber linen shift. "They were paging me at the departure gate. I was scarlet! Thank god it wasn't my own airline."
"You look very presentable," Jude murmured.
"Well, I got some duty-free makeup," Síle told her. "I've nothing else with me but credit cards. I was in such a fluster, I even left my gizmo on the kitchen counter. You're going to have to take me shopping in—" she tried to recall what the in-flight magazine had recommended for Toronto—"Yorkville, is that what it's called?"
"The problem with that is," said Jude, leading her toward the door, "we're meeting Gwen at the Summer Squash Fair at four."
"Is she competing?"
"Yeah, in the imaginative appetizer category, and she always runs the chutneys and preserves."
Síle did a double-take.
"Oh, you thought I meant squash, the sport?" Jude laughed.
"Can't we call her and change the time?" Then Síle sighed. "Right, she probably doesn't carry a mobile..."
"I believe it's the only Summer Squash Fair in the world."
"Well then! Lead on," said Síle, slipping on her new shades as they stepped out into the white sun.
Jude looked at her sideways. "Are you mad?"
"No no, I'll manage without any possessions somehow."
The Mustang had no air conditioning, and with the windows down, on the highway, the roaring air made it impossible to talk. Síle kept her hand on Jude's denim thigh and relished the sensation of doing absolutely nothing. When they got off onto smaller roads, driving past fields of stubble and gold, with the warm manure-scented wind flaring her hair, she felt ridiculously happy. She noticed fruit stalls, art studios, guesthouses, tearooms, Angel Treasures, Porch Geese, and other Traditional and Totally Unique Collectibles. "Has there been some kind of boom around here, since April?" she asked.
Jude shook her head. "Lots of businesses only open in the summer, to catch the tourist trade," she shouted back.
Síle slid her hand up under the soft T-shirt. She observed that having one nipple squeezed didn't affect Jude's driving, but it did alter her breathing. "Look," she said, pointing at a church sign, GOD RECEIVES KNEE MAIL! Damn, without her gizmo how could she be expected to remember anything?
Creamy sheep, brown cows, and a black horse and foal lying down in their field as if stoned. On the side of a barn in tall fresh letters: MARRIAGE = 1 MAN + 1 WOMAN. A garden furniture store with a sign that said GROW WHERE YOUR PLANTED. Jude said something that was lost in the warm wind.
"What?"
"I like that one, apart from the spelling."
"You would," Síle roared back.
The Summer Squash Fair, on a farm just outside Ireland, was packed solid. Under striped canopies, people were queuing up for zucchini ice cream with deep-fried squash blossoms, and there was a squash carving final coming up at five (the categories included Funny, Horror, and Celebrities). In the big tent, a troupe of eight aging couples were square dancing with ease: the men in cowboy shirts with shoelace ties, the women flicking up their ruched, starched petticoats. "My god," said Síle, "where have these hordes come from?"
Gwen was writing $3.99 on the lids of a batch of jams. "Which ones are the whores?" she asked mildly, looking down the field.
"Hordes, crowds, lots of people," said Síle, appalled. Jude howled with laughter.
"Oh, from all over, really," Gwen told her. "This event's pretty famous; I just met a family up from Ohio. That's my niece Tasmin over there, she's two centimetres dilated—"
"At last!" said Jude.
"—and she's going to keep walking round till her labour really kicks in. Jocelyne here"—Gwen nodded at an angular blonde collapsed in a deck chair behind the stall—"she's been in Troilus and Cressida and Private Lives over at the Stratford Festival all summer."
"Which sounds almost as exhausting as labour," murmured Síle. "You really treasure your English heritage here, don't you?"
"Not mine," Gwen corrected her. "I'm German; it was English pilots who firebombed my folks out of Dresden."
"Ah, history," murmured Jude into the brief Silence; "never a dull moment."
"D'you find the drive from Toronto long?" Gwen asked Síle.
"You mean, because the entire island of Ireland could be hidden in any park in Ontario?" asked Síle wryly. "No, it was fine, Gwen; my job is all about spending time in tin cans." She noticed, with mild irritation, her professional habit of repeating people's names.
"That Mustang should be torched. I'd do it for you, Jude, as an act of friendship."
Jude nodded. "The only problem is, the insurance money wouldn't even buy me a new motorbike helmet."
The Giant Vegetable Marrow was big enough for Jude and Síle to sit on and have their photo taken. Síle blew $2 on guessing its weight. (Canadian currency still seemed like Monopoly money to her; everything was so astonishingly cheap when she translated it into euro.) She had a slice of crisp barbecued zucchini slathered in pesto, and a plateful of tiny yellow ones sautéed and sliced to fan out, with their flowers still on and filled with some savoury mousse. The maple-glazed squash pie was her favourite. By throwing hoops at a wall of hooks, Jude won a basket of decorative gourds, and presented them to Síle, who was transfixed by the yellow knobbly crookneck with the goblin painted on it. "Hey, I could borrow your Swiss Army knife and whittle these into replicas of my missing baggage," she told Jude. "Soap dish, comb, ear plugs..."
"Jewelry box, castanets," Gwen contributed.
"Wonderbra," said Síle, putting two round gourds over her chest. "It'd be the development of civilization all over again."
Jude took her off for a Rustic Ride in a Pioneer Hay Wagon. "I thought you hated the peddling of nostalgia?" asked Síle.
"Only when it pretends to be history. If it's just a wagon ride, I'm all over it."
While the kids jumped up and down and threw hay at each other, Síle and Jude lay back in the scented, scratchy stuff. "You're such a skinnymalinks," Síle murmured, finding a soft spot under Jude's shoulder for her head, "I have to place myself carefully."
"So, are you a squash fan yet?"
"Fervent! Especially those striped Cocozelle; we never get them back home."
Jude gave her a slow kiss. "You know those movies about big-city Yanks visiting the innocent Old Country? Well, you seem to be doing it in reverse."
"I wouldn't call rural Ontario innocent, exactly," said Síle. "Just backward."
For that, Jude rubbed a lot of hay into her hair. When Síle had stopped fighting she lay quietly for a while, the sun scorching her legs as the wagon bumped them along the field.
Gwen came over for dinner, contributing a zucchini date walnut loaf. Síle was finding her a little bit of work, as quiet types always were, but they were usually worth the effort. "Why do you have to wear a pager on your day off?"
"Mostly in case a resident goes AWOL," Gwen told her.
"How can they wander out, don't you lock the doors?"
"Oh, you know. Human rights," said Gwen drily. "Freedom of movement and all that."
"Even if the Alzheimer's ones end up
under a tour bus of theatre-lovers," Jude pointed out.
Síle got Gwen reminiscing about her previous job in rural health outreach. "Only fifteen minutes from here, we're not talking the Yukon," said Gwen. "You've got your elderly and your Amish and your farm families, and none of them go to the doctor."
"Why not?" asked Síle. Gwen was kind of handsome in a pioneer way, she decided.
"That'd show weakness, wouldn't it? Be making a fuss in front of the neighbours. So they wait till the cancer's tertiary—that's the women; the men don't come at all unless they've had a leg sliced off in a thresher."
"Jaysus. I thought Irishmen were bad."
"Bad at what?" came a booming voice behind Síle, making her jump.
"You could call, you know, before strolling into my kitchen," Jude told Rizla.
"It's an ancient custom of my people to drop in, all spontaneous-like," he said, taking a chair and the last two slices of cake. Gwen curled her lip. "Besides, my phone's been cut off again."
Síle registered that she was the reason for his coming over, which was oddly flattering. She was ready for him this time. "To answer your question, Rizla, Irishmen are bad about neglecting their health. Cigarettes, dirty cuts on their hands," she said, her eyes dropping to his scarred fingers, "and too much cake."
His laugh was like the bursting of a balloon. "She's a quick one," he told Jude.
"Don't I know it."
"Anyway, these Amish ladies think it's immodest to eat too much, so their babies are born tiny," Gwen continued. "I roared at this one gal; I said, 'Aren't you supposed to be fruitful and multiply ?' As for breast self-exams—we had to call it a Women's Flu Information Night and hand out diagrams on the sly."
"More power to you." Síle laughed, draining her martini. "Country living, ugh!"
"Whatcha doing here again, then?" asked Rizla.
Síle grinned at him, tightening her grip on Jude's thigh under the table. "Lapping up the local delicacies," she said with precise innuendo.