The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,58

as I hang my coat under the stairs. He has dropped the girls to school and doubled back to confront me. From the bunched-up look of him I think he might give me a thump.

‘Are you missing work, for this?’ I say.

‘Where were you?’ he says, and I’d love to say I was out, like he is out all the time. Doing, making, being–or even shagging. I’d love to say, ‘I was just out shagging,’ in a debonair sort of voice, but I don’t want to think about how wan my body has become since I have taken to the darkness. I put my hand gently against his shirt front and the gesture is so graceful, even as I watch it, that it leads me, quite easily, to the buckle of the belt, which I tug with my other hand, and so, by softly pushing him away while pulling him forward, I contrive to blow my husband, in our own kitchen. On a school day.

This is real, I think. This is real.

Though I am not sure that it is, actually. When we are done, Tom plants a dry, thoughtful kiss in the middle of my forehead. He can not claim that he has been fobbed off–not after his official, all-time favourite thing–but he knows that he has been fobbed off, all the same. And it makes him angry.

‘I just don’t know where you’re coming from,’ he says. A corporate phrase from my corporate boy.

When he is gone, I go upstairs and lie down on Emily’s bed. Then I get up and pull the duvet back and lie down again. I do not know what she smells like, she is like a perfume you have been wearing too long, she is still too close to the inside of me. So I can not smell her, quite, but I know that her smell is there as I lie down with the thought of her beside me. I want to run my hand down her exquisite back, and over her lovely little bum. I want to check that it is all still there, and nicely packed, and happy, that my daughter’s muscles agree with her bones. I want to find the person that I built from my body’s own stuff, and grew on ten thousand plates of organic sausages and sugar-free beans, and I want to squeeze every part of her tight, until she is moulded and compact. I want to finish the job of making her, because when she is fully made she will be strong.

24

I TAKE THE train back from Brighton, and I meet Kitty in a pub in the ‘Gatwick Village’, for the flight home. The place is unnerving, all the usual slop of pint glasses and ashtrays, but on miniature tables to allow room for the trolleys and backpacks and bags; men falling asleep over their beers, unshaven and sad. The pub itself just a pretence of a pub, a painted corner of the concourse, a differently coloured floor. There are no doors. I pick my way through the filth of baggage and delayed lives to find Kitty–a woman weirdly like my little sister, though much too old.

When I reach the table, I look down at the empty glasses in front of her and I ask, ‘Are they all yours?’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ she says.

‘Just asking.’

‘Two of them are mine, the rest aren’t mine. OK?’

‘Do you want another one?’

‘Yes thank you, I would love another one.’

I turn to wade back towards the bar, and hear her say, ‘Bunny,’ which is the name she had for me when she was a child. I turn back to embrace her, my back twisted, my torso held away, as she half-rises to receive the hug, her thighs trapped under the little table of wood. Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease. From a distance, it was just as curly and beautiful and black as it ever was, though when I check her face I see that it has collapsed, quite fundamentally, and all the distraction of blue eyes, and mischievous cheeks, and winning smile–the whole Celtic chipmunk–has melted as easy as wax, leaving the flesh hanging on to bones, bones, bones.

‘How are you?’ I say.

‘How am I?’

‘Yes. How are you?’

‘Fine. I’m fine.’

‘What is it, anyway?’ I say.

‘It’s a G and T, thanks.’

‘Yes, I thought it was.’

‘Yes.’

It is many years, I think, since I have ordered a drink at a bar.