The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,79

foot.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I could never do that isn’t-it-all-lovely and aren’t-we-all-lovely touristy shite.’

Kitty explodes. ‘Uncle Val could live for a month on the price of your jacket. How much was that fucking jacket?’

‘Also you’re gay, you eejit,’ says Jem. ‘Maherbeg is where gay men go to shoot themselves in the barn.’

‘Oh, so that’s where it is,’ says Liam. I start to laugh and turn to catch him, but he is not there. He is dead. He is laid out in the next room.

A silence happens, as quick as a door clicking shut.

‘It’s a nice jacket,’ I say.

‘Thanks,’ says Ivor, trying to figure it all out. He has never been called ‘gay’ by a member of his family before. Never, not once. Like the bottle in the middle of the table, it only happens elsewhere.

Mossie lifts his eyebrows, and dips his face into his glass. Still down there, he says, ‘What is it–Paul Smith?’

‘Em…’ says Ivor, checking the inside pocket. As if he did not know.

Nor do we talk about money–the idea that one of us, even an uncle, might be poor or rich, or that it might matter. Something has happened to this family. The knot has come loose. Then Ita gets up on her hind legs and gives it a yank.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What a nice jacket.’

Here it comes. Ita has been drinking so long she has been made sober by it, and slow, and violent. She has some terrible revelation to make and I wonder what it will be. You never told me I was beautiful. Or something worse: You stole my best hairband in 1973 (I did actually). Family sins and family wounds, the endless pricking of something that we find hard to name. None of it important, just the usual, You ruined my life, or What about me? because with the Hegartys a declaration of unhappiness is always a declaration of blame.

‘What?’ I say. ‘What?’

By which I mean, What use is the truth to us now?

‘I’m going to sit with Liam,’ says Ita, finally, because the Hegartys also love a bit of moral high ground. She pushes herself away from the table at a good angle to hit the door. It’s the gin she wants, I realise. The grand exit was just an excuse so she can go and raid her stash.

I reach for the bottle, in a panic, and pour myself another glass. Liam taps his nose at me. But because Liam is dead I have to do it for him. So I tap my nose, three times.

‘What?’ says Kitty.

‘The nose,’ I say.

‘The what?’

‘Ita. The nose job.’

‘Oh come on,’ she says.

‘The tilt,’ I say. ‘The tilt.’

‘I’m with you,’ says Ivor, feeling grumpy now that he has lost his country house.

‘What do you call that?’ I say. ‘Retroussé?’

Mossie says, ‘What. Are. You. Talking about?’

‘The Hegarty nose,’ says Kitty. ‘Ita’s had a job done on our nose.’

‘I really think,’ says Mossie.

‘What?’

‘I really think. It’s her nose. At this stage.’

And we roar laughing, for some reason.

After the laughter is finished, Kitty and Mossie are left staring at each other across the table. Enough is enough, I think. I can’t do the Mossie thing as well as everything else. Yes, he hit us, Kitty. He was fifteen. He hit us all.

I get up to go to the toilet, and meet Bea at the door.

Ita has taken her turn with the corpse. She is leaning against the door jamb of the front room when I pass; a glass of thick water in her hand. She is crying. Or just leaking, perhaps. She does not turn as I climb the stairs. From the back, she looks beautiful. From the back she looks like Lauren Bacall.

I go to the bathroom and pee and wash my hands and look at the same cabinet mirror that has reflected my face for thirty years or so. The silver backing is peeling at the edges. Who could blame it? I think. And turn away to go and face them all again downstairs.

When I get out of the bathroom, my mother’s door is open, just a crack.

‘Bea?’ says her voice into the gap. ‘Bea?’

‘No, Mammy, it’s me.’

I go to her. When I open the door fully, I find that she is already back sitting on her bed, weirdly, like a video that has been put on fast forward and then paused.

‘What do you want, Mammy, are you all right?’

‘I thought you were Bea,’ she says.

‘No, it’s me, Mammy. Do you want me to get her?