My sister.
I imagined all the pupils in the watching, knowing eyes behind the visors dilating in astonishment.
When I left that afternoon, I did not stop at the bus shelter. I crossed Palmerstown Road. I went up into the terra incognita on the other side of the street. I did not expect to find Kerry still there, but I hoped, and because I hoped, I was afraid. I rehearsed it past the Chinese take-away, and re-rehearsed it by Mrs. Ecstatic Eclairs, threw it all out by the Andy Warhol Scots Porage Oats man, drafted new opening lines as I dodged the traffic on Palmerstown Road, and was up the steps at the white Georgian door of number 20, pressing the button for Flat Five, suddenly sick at heart because I did not know how to greet my sister after three years of banishment.
Feet clattered down the stairs. The inner door opened, then the outer.
“Ya?”
The hair had to be a wig, or grafted extensions. Crow black, it hung to mid thigh. The face inside it was a pixie’s; features flattened, widened by make-up. All slants and slits and smears. Elf-thing. The kid wore a halfdisintegrated lace body-stocking, more hole than whole, stretch spiderweb. A nipple protruded through the mesh, erect in the cold November air. Rosebud in winter. The fingernails were chromed.
It was not her.
“Wa?”
Their title escapes me, but their theology made an impression on my memory. On a planet orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani live an immeasurably wise and ancient avian race of great beneficence who tour the cosmos by astral projection. Channeling themselves into the bodies of Earthly hosts, they do good and work wonders and bestow the graces of their limitless wisdom and slowly uplift humanity to cosmic consciousness. Alien ambassadors. Walk-ins.
Post-Catholic Ireland’s cultural diversity policy has made it a haven for sub-cultures. From across Europe, and beyond, they come to build their communities and live their alternative life-styles and explore different ways of being human. We are becoming a nation of tribes. So said the Sunday color supplement article in which I read about the Epsilon Eridani walk-ins, and some of the other, more bizarre, societies.
“I’m looking for my sister,” I said.
“Tarroweep.”
My turn to grunt the monosyllabic response.
“This is Tarroweep,” the kid said. “Whatever you want, you say to her.” “My sister. Kerry O’Neill.”
“Wa?”
The ancient wisdoms of Epsilon Eridani were not manifesting much of their cosmic consciousness this evening.
“Kerry. My sister. She lives here.”
“Tarroweep does not recognize this entity.”
“Well, she may have lived here. About nine months ago?”
“Tarroweep does not recognize this entity. Tarroweep has occupied this nest for four years.”
“Her address is here.” Perhaps she thought I was a debt collector, or a persistent ex-boyfriend, or a Jehovah’s Witness, and this was an original antidoor-stepping tactic. “Listen, I’m her brother. I’d just like to see her, that’s all. I’ve got some news for her.” I thought about my news. “Good news.” “Tarroweep does not recognize this entity. Tarroweep has occupied this nest for four years.”
“Maybe you don’t know her as Kerry.” The great detective had forgotten to bring a photograph with him. “She looks like me.”
The space-pixie that called herself Tarroweep frowned as she studied my face. Her nostrils flared, she seemed to be scenting me.
“There is no Kerry,” she said flatly.
I saw a figure move across the top of the stairs.
“Kerry?” I shouted. “Hello! It’s me! Stephen.”
The figure moved back to the top of the stairs and descended halfway. It wore the same mane of black hair but was dressed in leather pants and jacket. The jacket was open. The chest was bare. It was not Kerry.
“You are disturbing the ambassador,” the boy said. “She should not be disturbed when channeling. It’s dangerous.”
The pixie-thing at the door half-smiled, half-grimaced.
“Ya,” the ambassador to Sol Three said. The door closed.
Birds of ill omen flew over me as I walked to the bus stop. Black birds. I felt lied to; mocked. I wanted to go back and shake that silly space-pixie girl until the cosmic intellect from Epsilon Eridani was shaken out of her and I could tell her that the computer said that Kerry O’Neill had lived in the top flat for the past two and a bit years, and the computers always spoke the truth. I raged inwardly and clenched my fists and shook as the bus lurched through the dark avenues of south Dublin. It was not silly Tarroweep in her ridiculous costume with her flatline answers that I was angry at. It was too much anger for her. I raged for the two and something years that Kerry had lived one minute beyond the boundary of my world, and that the courage to cross it had come too late.
I lose days to an anger attack. The anger itself, then the guilt at having been angry, then the depression after the guilt. And after the depression, the realization that the search was not over. Kerry’s account had shown a regular weekly payment of fifty pounds to a consistent account number. A few minutes of dread and digits under the eyeless gaze of the Allied Irish’s virtuality visors gave me that account number and name. Dr. Matthew Collins, working out of an address on Fitzwilliam Square. I cross checked with the Golden Pages. Not an MD. A psychotherapist.
I hesitated days over arranging the meeting with Dr. Collins. You do not like to think of one of your family seeing a psychotherapist. It feels unclean, unnatural. Polluted with a rainbow oil-film of madness. Ma had always dreaded madness in the family, twining its roots around our DNA. Whispered-of relatives had been institutionalized. Auntie Mary had been taken away for eating a pair of curtains. We’d laughed; once and only once. You didn’t laugh about mental illness in our family. You didn’t talk about it at all; while Ma twitched and shrieked about her nerves, her nerves, and took to her bed because a dog was barking in the street or we were shouting while she was trying to watch Fair City.
Pity the carcinoma angel took her before the angel of paranoia.
Fitzwilliam Square is the handsomest of Dublin’s many handsome squares, but the November light lends a particular radiance to the Georgian townhouses. The red brick releases a generous, sun-warmed aura. The white window frames glow. The palings and iron balconies cast long, military shadows.
Dr. Collins’s office was on the top floor. His consulting room overlooked the railed-off key park in the center of the square. A couple of valiant residents were making the most of the rare sun by playing out-of-season tennis in the little gravel court. I could hear the pop and thwock of the ball, and the players’ laughing voices.