After his walk to the lake with Liam and a demoralizing breakfast of yogurt and fruit-his idea, not Broughadoon’s-he and Cynthia had taken off for Ben Bulben, where the Vauxhall climbed a rude track along the flank. They slowed for sheep in the road, searched the views. Then lunch at the tea shop in Drumcliff and out to the churchyard where she sketched Yeats’s headstone. Covered by a layer of common gravel, his grave had looked bereft among those better-tended.
Through it all, Cynthia was subdued. The prolonged ankle business-the crutches and the craving to toss them-had gotten to her; she was struggling through an inevitable patch of depression. He seldom saw her out of sorts, it was mildly alarming, he would do anything-stand on his head, whistle Dixie-to help her through.
She stood at the chest of drawers, leafing aimlessly through the work of the day. He looked over her shoulder.
‘That’s a good one,’ he said. ‘The great Ben as the prow of a ship steering through a green sea.’ He thought she might enjoy the imagery.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do it,’ she said, not hearing.
He shucked change from his pocket to the tray. ‘Do what?’
‘William’s portrait by firelight.’
‘Worst case, let’s say you really can’t do it. What difference does it make?’
‘All the difference.’
‘All? Isn’t that carrying it a little far?’
‘His face is the best of faces, I won’t find another like it’
‘Then why not a portrait by daylight or lamplight? Why heap on coals with the firelight business, no pun intended?’
She looked up at him. ‘Because that’s the way he should be painted. It’s the way it needs to be done’
This was making him crazy. ‘But you’re anxious about it.’
‘It’s all right to be anxious. A bit of stage fright is good for the performance, don’t you think?’
Well, yes-he agreed.
‘So you pray and I’ll paint and together we’ll get the job done. Okay?’ She smiled, innocent as any babe.
Thank God, he’d hardly had a smile out of her all day. ‘You’re a bloody nutcase.’
‘Mush, mush, and more mush.’
He pressed her close, wordless. That he could hold to himself all the comfort in all the world was sometimes nearly too great a thing to believe.
At Anna’s suggestion, the poker club and the Kavanaghs joined tables at dinner. Cynthia ordered a bottle of Prosecco, which Liam kept for the Italians who sometimes came.
‘To a safe and happy journey,’ said his wife, ‘for the Book Poker Fishin’ Irish Widows’ Travel Club!’
‘That’s us!’ said Debbie.
‘Slainte!’ he said.
‘Salute!’ said everyone else.
Moira adjusted her glasses, shuffled papers. ‘Okay, time for th’ language test we’ve been talkin’ about-let’s hear everything you’ve learned so far.’
‘Um,’ said Lisa. ‘La dolce vita!’
‘Ferragamo, Armani, por favore!’ said Tammy. ‘What else could we possibly need?’
‘We’ve hardly had time to learn a whole other language,’ said Debbie. ‘I only have one word.’
‘Go for it,’ said Moira, who was making the rules.
‘Magnifico?’ said Debbie.
‘Say that anywhere, it will get you points.’
‘I hope we’re not going to conjugate any verbs this evenin’,’ said Lisa.
‘On th’ plane tomorrow. Now-for a night out in Positano, this is all you need, th’ whole nine yards; I made a copy for everybody: Ciao. Falanghina. Risotto. Tiramisu. Espresso. Il conto. Ciao.’
‘Two ciaos?’
‘One for hello, one for sayonara,’ said Moira. ‘As for our night out in Naples, we’ll be addin’ this to our vocabulary: Vada via che sa di aglio.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Buzz off, garlic breath.’
‘Idn’t she terrific?’ asked Debbie.
‘Bilingual,’ said Cynthia.
‘Y’all goin’ to meet here next year?’ asked Lisa.
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Cynthia. ‘Are you?’
‘Maybe. We really like it over here, th’ lake fishin’ an’ all.’
‘I really like workin’ with ghillies,’ said Debbie.
Hoots, cackles, the usual.
He raised his glass. ‘Happy fishing in Italy!’ This launched a din that made his ears ring.
‘You are quaint,’ said his wife, patting his hand.
‘Tim and Cynthia’-Tammy lifted her glass; bracelets jangling. ‘Safe travel, strong ankles, and may th’ dollar clobber th’ euro, pronto!’
‘Salute! ’
‘Amen,’ he said.
Liam came to the table. ‘A phone call from your son. Take it in the kitchen, we’ll hold th’ noise down at th’ sink.’
He passed through the swinging door in a blur and picked up the phone.
‘Hey, buddy?’
‘Hey, Dad.’
Something was wrong, he could hear it. His heart seized.
‘I messed up.’
‘Talk to me,’ he said.
‘She hit me. That’s it, I’m done. It’s over.’
‘Why did she hit you?’
‘I told her she was ice sculpture. She’s cold, Dad, frozen like Mitford Creek two winters ago. You could skate on her ice.’
The up email, the down phone call. Roller coaster.
He eased himself into the corner behind the desk, turning his back to Maureen and Bella at the sink, Liam at the stovetop. ‘She hit you because hitting was what she learned all the years she was being hit.’
‘It’s time she got over those years.’
‘Why are you done? Why did you end it?’
‘What else could I do?’
‘You could talk.’
‘No way.’
‘Do you love her?’
A long silence. Then, ‘I wish I didn’t.’
Before Dooley was ten years old, his mother had given away four of her five children; his father, a violent drunk and erstwhile highway laborer, vanished along the severe slab he’d helped pour. Cleaving asunder was hard for anybody, especially for kids who had felt the cleaver again and again; he could sense Dooley’s anguish clear across the Pond.
‘Where did she hit you?’
‘Slammed me in th’ gut.’
‘It wasn’t the first time.’
Soon after the two met, Dooley had hidden Lace’s hat-a despoiled affair which she wore with ominous pride. She’d let him have a big one in the solar plexus.
‘Ice,’ he said, ‘is what you turn into when you’re trying to protect yourself. Ice is what keeps you from feeling anything.’ Dooley Barlowe had shown up on the rectory doorstep a decade ago, his anger frozen in a glacier of his own. It was melting, drop by everlasting drop, but only in the temperate climate of love and with a staggering amount of patience. ‘Are you with me, buddy?’
‘I guess. Not really. Gotta go.’
‘Wait. Give me a minute.’
Silence. A minute begrudged.
‘Can you forgive her?’
‘Why invest more energy in somebody who thinks slammin’ you in th’ gut solves everything? She brought me to my knees, Dad.’ There was the boil-there was the sticking point.
‘Hitting you wasn’t a good thing, I admit. But if you think about it…’
‘I don’t want to think about it. Gotta go.’
The transatlantic cable hummed; he set the receiver on its charger.
He was a wreck.
‘You’re a wreck,’ she said. She was waiting for him at the garden door; he went to her and they stepped outside and sat on the bench.
‘Dooley and Lace,’ she said, knowing. ‘At it again.’
He shrugged, shook his head. ’Til the cows come home, I suppose.’ This was more than a lovers’ quarrel, it was something deeply poisonous that both Lace and Dooley carried like a virus. He’d seen Lace the first time several years ago; she was stealing Sadie Baxter’s ferns-digging them with a mattock, shoving them into a sack to sell to a mountain nursery. Watching her eyes beneath the brim of her ruined hat, he asked her to replant everything she had dug, but she had stood him down. I’ll knock you in th’ head, she said, if you lay hands on my sack-I don’t care if you are a preacher.