I made her wait a second or two before I took hold of her, before I flipped her backwards onto the bed. ‘That was your best decision?’ I said, pulling at the sash of her robe. ‘That?’ At the time, she was laughing, pretending to fight me off; she finally agreed to demote it officially to second-best and rate marrying me her finest moment of decision-making.
Which is, of course, I theorise, as I sit with my head resting on the table of my deserted kitchen, exactly the answer she’d known I’d want. Did she say those things just to please me? Was she just humouring me? Has she been pretending all along? Had she just been waiting for my first slip-up before she pulled a vanishing act on me? Has my whole marriage been a sham?
I raise my head, weary of myself, of my life, of my mind and its endless, circling tracks. Get a grip, I tell myself, as I rise to my feet, think about this rationally. You and your wife have had an argument. You changed your plans without telling her, you extended a trip. While it’s not impossible that she has another bucolic hideaway up her sleeve, just waiting on the off-chance that she decides to exit her life again, it’s highly unlikely. So, all may be resolved if you talk it through with her. All you have to do now is find her. Simple.
I get down the coffee-maker, fill it, put it on the stove and fire up the gas underneath. The wheezing draw of its workings, its acrid vapour, goes some way to calming me, to helping me think – always has done.
Where would Claudette go?
I look round the room, taking in the sofas, the stove, the armchairs set facing each other, the table with the candelabra, the collection of antique mirrors, the photos of the children at various ages, the long curtains of fraying chinoiserie silk, with an endlessly repeating scene of a bridge with pagodas, where a hundred identical women with a hundred identical parasols wait for a hundred identical men in triangular hats who are inexplicably hiding themselves in some bamboo. Calvin is making short work of the embroidery in the curtains’ lower reaches: most of the women have been divested of their parasols and the men’s cover has been pretty much blown, leaving them out in the open.
When I first saw the room, it looked nothing like this. The curtains were still waiting for Pascaline to discover them in some Parisian vintage store, the stars hadn’t yet formed themselves into ceiling constellations, the walls weren’t blue but a stained and faded distemper, showing signs of the mildew that had only recently been scrubbed away. Claudette and Ari had been living here for eighteen months, just the two of them. Workmen had been here, in the time between her buying it and her moving in, but only intermittently and erratically. The roof had been fixed so the house wasn’t open to the elements but the whole top floor was still uninhabitable and there were still big sections of floorboards missing, the dark oubliettes of the house exposed for all to see.
She and Ari, then, were mostly inhabiting this room. When I first came, there was the stove, a table, a makeshift kitchen and two iron beds dragged close to the fire. Their whole life, their whole shrivelled world, was there for me to see and I was, frankly, dumbfounded. I had not expected her to be living in that way, in a decaying, rotten, forgotten building site. I’d only known her a short while, it was true, but when I came to the house and saw their beds, the stained walls, the state of the place, I saw not an intrepid and intriguing woman who had evaded notoriety and set herself up in a new life. I saw a woman half-crazed with loneliness and paranoia, and a kid so traumatised by events in his past that he could barely speak.
It took her a week or two to permit me up the track and over the threshold. Against all better judgements, I turned up that day at the crossroads, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching the directions that Mrs Spillane had drawn for me in leaky ballpoint. I didn’t really know why I was going. Curiosity, I suppose. I have often based decisions on what the more interesting outcome would be and that morning, as I ate Mrs Spillane’s rubbery breakfast eggs, I had been weighing up my options: flying back to the States or keeping a rendezvous with a reclusive ex-movie star.
No contest, obviously.
It was like a crossroads from a folktale illustration. Dry-stone walls hemmed it in on all sides, green fields stretched away from it, there was a slightly wonky signpost, and – best of all – it had a cross. Did you ever hear of anything more literal to adorn a crossroads? A great blackened wood thing it was, looming beside the road. There was one of those little shrines that you see all over Ireland, recessed into the wall and painted white, with a rain-blurred image of the Virgin, a long-extinguished candle encased in glass and numerous offerings left there by the hopeful, the devout, the desperate.
She was there. The car was pulled in at the side of the road, half of its wheels parked on the verge. And she and Ari were, strangely, sitting on its roof. I peered out of my misted-over windshield to be sure of this. Yes, there they were, on the car roof, shrouded in hooded coats, each with a pair of binoculars tilted at the sky, apparently oblivious to the veils of grey rain coming at them horizontally.
‘So,’ I hailed them as I got out of my car, ‘this must be the place.’
‘Ssh,’ was her first word to me.
(Does it, in fact, even qualify as a word? I’m not sure it does. ‘Phonic’ might be more accurate. Her first phonic to me.)
‘What are you looking at?’ I asked, in a more modulated tone.
‘Two hawks and a buzzard,’ she answered, without looking my way.
I peered into the sky. I could see nothing but the iron-hued underside of a cumulonimbus, the rain needling my eyes. Far up in the distance I could make out a black shape or two, holding their stillness in a place of turmoil and current.
‘The buzzard,’ Ari burst out excitedly, removing his binoculars to look at me, ‘the buzzard – the buzzard – the b– the b– the b—’
She had lowered her binoculars by this time and was regarding her son, and her face showed nothing but the desire to help him.
‘The buzzard,’ she put in for him, ‘caught a mouse, didn’t he, Ari? At least, we thought it was a mouse. It might have been a small rabbit.’
She raised her binoculars again. I looked at Ari; he looked back at me.
Is it weird to say that I’ve always felt Ari in some way chose me? That he decided or divined in that moment what should ensue from that meeting? I don’t mean that Claudette wasn’t given a choice – clearly she was, and so was I. Either way, the next thing that happened was that Ari launched himself off the car. He stood, on that slippery, rain-covered roof, and leapt, all in one movement. Straight into my arms.
I caught him, of course. My parental reflexes weren’t that rusty. You see a kid flying through the air and you reach out, you make sure you’re there to cushion the landing. He felt different from Niall, from Phoebe. I remember thinking this, with no small pang of pain. He had lighter bones, somehow, a springier, longer feel to his limbs. He lacked the solidity, the familiarity of my own children. And his hair, as it lay against my cheek, was finer and curlier.
So there we were, him and me, locked in an embrace, on a lonely, wind-battered stretch of Irish road: the fatherless son and the sonless father.
I threw him up in the air, of course, because that’s what you do when a kid leaps into your arms. There’s no written rule on this but everyone knows it’s next on the agenda. I didn’t even have to warn him before I tossed him up. He knew it was coming and so did I.
The first time wasn’t so high that it would frighten him. He laughed so I did it again, higher this time, high enough so I could clap once before catching him.
His fine hair flew into a halo and his face was stretched in delight and fear. Again, he was yelling, again, his fingers gripping at my sleeves, again. Up he went, down he came, up, down, with me catching him each time under his arms.
When we finished, we were both breathless. I put him down on the road, holding on to him until I knew he’d found his balance, but he gripped me round the legs, pleading for more, because that, too, is the way these things are d
one.
‘So, tell me,’ I said, my palm on top of his damp curls, looking up and down the road, ‘where can you get a decent cup of coffee round here?’
The answer was, in her car, from a flask, but it wasn’t coffee, it was hot chocolate.
‘Jesus,’ I said, as I took my first swallow. I’d been expecting some watery beverage made from powder but this stuff was hot, thick, dark and impossibly good. It was like whipped, creamy soup, like molten magic, like nothing I’d ever tasted before. ‘What in the world—’
‘Maman makes it,’ Ari interrupted in a rush, his head pushed between the two front seats, where his mother and I were sitting, ‘with special chocolate beans.’
‘She grows chocolate beans?’ I said, looking at her but her face was turned away, obscured by hair. ‘Now that is an impressive skill.’
Ari gave a peal of delighted laughter and whacked me on the shoulder, the lightest feather of a punch I’d ever received. ‘No. You don’t grow chocolate beans.’
‘Oh, yeah? Where do they come from, then?’
‘You buy them.’
‘I reckon she definitely grew them.’
‘She didn’t!’
‘She strikes me as the type who might have a secret chocolate tree in her backyard.’
‘They don’t grow on a tree!’ He turned to his mother. ‘He thinks they grow on a tree!’
She turned her face towards him, making her large eyes even larger. ‘Maybe they do,’ she whispered.
‘They don’t,’ he said, with only a hint of doubt. ‘I know they don’t. Grandmère sent them from Paris. You told me.’ He gave her seat a nudge, and the movement caused hot chocolate to slop over the side of his cup.
‘Oh,’ she said, in dismay, as hot rivers of chocolate trickled down her coat sleeve, pooling in the folds and pleats.
‘S-sorry, Maman,’ the kid was saying. ‘S-s-sorry, s-s—’
‘It’s OK,’ she was saying, ‘don’t worry,’ and I was saying the same and mopping at her sleeve and her hair with my handkerchief. Ari was still apologising, or trying to, and she was telling him that accidents happen, and I was still wiping away.
‘Ari,’ she said, putting her hand on his, ‘it doesn’t matter. OK? Now, why don’t you go outside and play?’
We watched through the misted windscreen as Ari made his way over the wall and into the field. I shifted in my seat. The peculiarity of the situation washed over me: here I was, squeezed into a car with a former movie star whom most people assumed was dead. What was I doing here? What could she possibly want from me? I was also, I remember, giving myself a firm talking-to. I knew what I was like around women, especially attractive ones, and there was no way I could allow myself to go into hormonal autopilot with this particular specimen. This was Claudette Wells, for Chrissake. I really needed to keep myself in check. She probably had armed security guards just out of sight who could be summoned at the merest lift of one of her slender fingers.
‘You know,’ I said, because I had to say something, had to break this silence, and I held aloft my chocolate-stained handkerchief, ‘I’m seriously considering putting this in my mouth and chewing on it so as not to waste a single drop.’
She let out a laugh. ‘Don’t let me stop you. But please bear in mind that there is plenty more.’ She proffered the flask and I allowed her to pour an inch or so into my cup.
‘You have an amazing kid,’ I said, keeping my gaze on the curvature of her wrists, her sweater cuffs, her fingernails, almond-shaped, they were. I think I had decided that minimal eye contact was the way forward, if I was to avoid inappropriate auto-flirting. ‘He’s really quite something. So responsive and smart.’
She looked across at me. I permitted myself a micro-second of contact with those startling feline eyes, but no more.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I always think so, too, but I have to admit a certain amount of bias. Do you have children?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I do.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about my legal wrangles, my parental anguish, but something stopped me. The thought crossed my mind that it wasn’t the kind of thing one told women – single women, mothers, beautiful ones – in case they thought you were a deviant or a criminal. ‘I do,’ I said again. ‘Two. A boy and a girl. Older than Ari.’ Then I saw in a rush of panic that this might represent me to her as a married man. ‘They live with their mom. My ex. Ex-wife. We’re not together. We separated. Split up. Got divorced.’ Why, I was asking myself, was I so keen to dispel the idea that I was attached? What was I thinking, that this was some kind of date? What was going on in my head? Was I insane? ‘I’m divorced,’ I heard myself say, one last time, just for good measure, just in case she hadn’t quite got my drift.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘About the divorce, I mean.’
‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’ I rolled my eyes in her direction but found she was looking at me, so turned wildly to the landscape, the clouds, the rain-polished gleam of the road before us. ‘So,’ I addressed the dry-stone walls, ‘what about Ari’s dad?’
She was still looking at me, I could feel it. I drummed my fingers on the dashboard.
‘What about him?’
‘Are you and he still together or …?’
‘Separated,’ she said, giving each syllable a staccato emphasis. ‘We never actually married.’
‘Ah. OK. Maybe that makes things simpler.’
‘Not really,’ she said, with a wry smile.
‘Ha. You’re right. I don’t know what I’m saying. “Simple” is probably the most inaccurate word ever for these situations, isn’t it? We’d need its exact opposite, its complete antonym. “Complex”, maybe, or “labyrinthine”. Tortuous, convoluted, tricky, byzantine. Any of those might be more apt.’ I managed, with great effort, to shut my mouth and my gabbling mercifully ceased.
‘Well,’ she said, after a moment’s silence, ‘we’ve all been there.’
‘Mmm,’ I said, but what I wanted to say was: Really? You’ve been there? You? You have made mistakes and got yourself into unresolvable situations with unsuitable people, just like us ordinary mortals?
Then she said, ‘You’re probably wondering why I asked you here today.’
‘No,’ I said, thinking, Hell, yes. ‘Not at all, I just—’
‘How long do you plan to stay in Donegal?’ she asked and, caught off-guard, I looked at her. Her face was impossible to read and seemed suddenly and uncomfortably close to mine, in the steamed-up little car. A minuscule crease appeared between her perfectly arched eyebrows. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ she said.
‘Not at all. The thing is …’ I faltered, mesmerised by the separate strands of her eyelashes, which seemed so intriguingly dark in comparison to the golden sheen of her hair, by the constellation of freckles that plotted itself across the bridge of her nose.
I attempted to hijack and drag my renegade attention back to the conversation. It was a question, I was almost sure. But what had been the question? That was the question. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘what did you say?’
The crease had deepened to a frown. ‘I just wondered how long you were planning to stay around here but you don’t have to say, if you’d rather not. Obviously, it’s none of my business and—’
‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘Could be a while.’ My leg moved convulsively against my bag, inside which, I knew, and my leg knew, was an air ticket with tomorrow’s date on it. ‘I’m just, you know, travelling around a bit. Hired a car. Thought I’d see a bit of the old country.’ The old country? The old country? Had I actually said that? ‘I don’t have to be back in the States until the beginning of next semester. So. It could be a while.’
‘Oh.’ Her expression cleared and she smiled at me, an astonishing, wide, beatific smile. ‘That’s great. You see, I was wondering, and I know it’s a big favour and you must please say no if you’d rather not …’
She was off, explaining something about whether or not it wou
ld be possible for me to do some sessions with Ari while I was there. I watched her hands, moving through the close air of the car, as she said that of course she would pay me for my time and reimburse me for any expenses incurred. I watched the tresses – because it was the kind of hair which warranted that noun, usually confined to usage only within fairytales – of her hair move on the surface of her coat. I watched the timpani beat of her pulse in a vein that traversed the hollow in the lee of her collarbone. It was taking everything in me not to say, smile at me like that again and I’ll do anything you want. My twenty-something self seemed to be riding in the ascendant today, for some reason, and I had to tamp him down, tie him up, gag him, at all costs. There was no way I was letting him out, giving him free rein in this car. I experienced briefly, disquietingly, a flitting image of a payphone in the dim hallway of my English-exchange-year house, and I banished it quickly, without permitting myself to ask why.
‘You know,’ I said, holding up my hand to stop her, ‘I would love to help you –’
‘Thank you,’ she burst out, ‘thank you so much.’
‘– but I’m not sure I’m the man for the job. I’m not qualified to help someone like Ari. I’m not a speech therapist or even a specialist in developmental dysfluency.’
‘But those things you said to him, about starting off with another sound or finding a different word, they were—’
‘All things I got from doing a research-assistant job, twenty years ago,’ I interjected gently. ‘I’m a linguist. I specialise in language change, in the genetics, if you like, of what we say. I really don’t know very much at all about the challenges that Ari is facing. I wouldn’t feel confident in …’