It seemed like such a long time ago that Sorcha called, that Aileen tore down the road to Moira’s house. She knew she should try to get some sleep, but her mind raced, one thought plowing into the next with relentless momentum. It was like being on a sinister carousel; she couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t get off. She looked in Rosheen’s room, clean now, because Aileen had neatened it to cope with her absence, to avoid acknowledging the space devoid of her daughter’s presence, the chaos that was Rosheen. It appeared her daughter had come home, briefly, when Aileen wasn’t there, to retrieve a T-shirt and pair of jeans. Aileen wondered if she timed her visits, spying from the hedge to make sure she was out. The thought saddened her.
She kept thinking a dramatic event would force Rosheen to admit she needed her: that a friend would overdose, or Ronnie would cheat on her, or there would be an accident, and she would call Aileen, her voice shaking, tearful, Mam, please, come get me, Aileen crying too, coming to the rescue at last. Aileen could see it as if she were watching a film, she the star, the mother, who would do anything for her children.
But it wasn’t a movie, was it? There was no phone call. Life didn’t work like that. Not hers, anyway.
There was only that empty room with the fringed purse missing from the doorknob, letting her know Rosheen was moving farther away from her with each passing day, until she’d reach the point of no return. Aileen hoped it didn’t come to that. But what could she do? She felt trapped inside herself, inside that life, clutching the snarled cord of their relationship, seemingly impossible to unravel.
Aileen sat by the window, arms locked across her chest, fingers pressing into her skin hard enough to leave marks. She gazed at the shelled drive, bits of broken cockle and periwinkle glowing dimly in the half-light, the winding lane, deserted now. A scythe of moon pierced a torn cloud. Wings fluttered in the dark, an owl or a bat most likely, though she let herself believe it was Rosheen somewhere nearby. The minutes crept by, Aileen sitting there, waiting, the futility finally too much for her, hands a-fidget in her lap. She had to do something.
And then she knew. She nearly laughed, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it before. She went upstairs, the idea taking shape in her mind. She searched Rosheen’s overstuffed drawers until she found what she was looking for: a plain sensible bra her daughter no longer wore, shoved in the back of the bureau, near some days-of-the-week knickers she wouldn’t be caught dead in now.
Downstairs, at the kitchen table, Aileen took out her scissors and cut. She’d watched Kate lay the foundations; she knew what to do. She labored until morning, not in haste or fury but in concentrated precision, working the lace, the ribbons, until light, not from the buzzing bulb overhead, but the wide open sky, filled the room and revealed what she’d made. She held up her hands, those veined and roughened hands that had changed nappies and washed dishes and done laundry and slapped smart-mouthed faces and clenched in rage, hands that had made this one beautiful thing she hoped her daughter would like.
The finches in the hedgerow, where Rosheen had hidden as a little girl, sang as the sun rose, marking the beginning of another day. Aileen smiled to herself as she laid the bra on her daughter’s bed, where she was sure to find it, the lace a cross and bones on the left breast. It was exquisite, that skull, true.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Wear it well.”
Chapter 24
Famine Ghosts
Sullivan had continued to be distant since the night by the tower. It was as if the walls of that place now stood between him and Kate, keeping them apart. He had to go out of town again, to a craft fair up the coast, he said, selling the pottery, conducting his business, and Kate told herself it was better that way. That perhaps a brief separation would give him the opportunity to realize he missed her, that it was time to talk.
Or would he reach the conclusion that he was better off on his own?
“We need to send out reminder e-mails to the tourist boards about the market,” Bernie said that afternoon. “Why don’t you drop by Sullivan’s and ask to borrow the computer?”
“I don’t think he’s