Fishing the Sloe-Black River

STOLEN CHILD

Padraic closes the heavy oak door of the children’s home and steps out into the Brooklyn morning light. He looks across the river to where the sun is coming up like a stabwound, leaving smudges of dirty light on the New York City skyline. He pulls up the hood of his coat and steps across the road. In the background he hears one of the boys kicking at the wooden door, a dull rhythmic thud. A young girl screams from the third-floor window. In the distance a police siren flares. Christ, he thinks, no day for a wedding.

He pulls his dark blue anorak up around his shoulders, cups his hands, and lights the last of his cigarettes. He inhales the smoke to the bottom of his lungs, adjusts his glasses, and looks back at the home where he just clocked off the graveyard shift.

A clutch of blind children have their heads stuck out the bars of the lower windows. One of the girls, her hair a shock of orange, is thrashing her head against the bars. The whites of her eyes loll obscenely in her head. He shrugs his shoulders to indicate to her that it’s not his fault, but, catching himself, he turns away, then pulls hard again on the cigarette. Padraic hears another shout from inside the home. He turns and watches a bread van cough along the street. The exhaust fumes languish in the air, and for a moment he thinks about letting the smoke carry him along, away down the dark puddled road, to somewhere very different.

At ten o’clock last night, little Marcia, only fourteen years old, tried to slit her wrists with a tin mirror. She cut a narrow scar perpendicular to the veins while Tammy screamed over and over again that she was messing up, that the way to do it was to slice longways along the vein, rip it good and deep. When the lads in the boys’ unit found out that one of the girls had tried to do herself in, a near-riot had broken out. Jimi set fire to the couch in the living room. Chocolate Charlie put his foot through the glass case of the stereo, and two other boys had to be restrained. Nearly all the kids, those forgotten blind children, the snot rags of society, had spent the night beating their brains against the walls repeatedly — like birds with broken wings, unable to get off the ground.

Padraic flings the cigarette butt to the ground. He walks toward the subway station, sweeping the bits and pieces of litter out of his way with his feet. In one of the houses he hears a radio burst to life. A curtain opens and a woman’s face fills a top windowpane. An old man in a mangy overcoat is out on the steps playing the Jewish harp and slurping on a bottle of Miller. He nods and offers the bottle, but Padraic gives a quick flick of the head sideways and the old man smiles.

“Too early for the sloppin’?” he asks.

“Too early for anything,” says Padraic.

The steps down to the subway station smell, as usual, of stale urine, and Padraic skips down them three at a time, fishing in his pocket for a token. Nothing but loose change. He left all the tokens at home last night. He takes a quick look. Nobody in the booth and hardly anyone else around, except two young nurses shivering in the cold, a kid in a Van Halen Kicks Ass T-shirt, and a spindly little businessman reading a newspaper down at the end of the platform. He vaults the turnstile, hustles down to the platform, and waits for the wind to be sucked through the tunnel, carrying the clang of an engine.

When the D train finally comes, it’s a local. He sits in a carriage alone, the seat bedecked with graffiti, and wonders if Orla, his wife, will be awake when he gets back to their flat. It’ll be nice to curl up beside her and let the morning pass. Or wake her to get her to massage the knots in his neck.

In Brighton Beach he turns the key quietly in the apartment door and tiptoes into the bedroom where Orla is sleeping, a copy of Philip Larkin’s High Windows on her chest. He picks up the book and skims through it quickly, leans over her, kisses her on the cheek.

“No day for a wedding,” he says.

* * *

Padraic had come far across an incomprehensible ocean, from a place called Leitrim, and when Dana first heard him talk she thought he must have swallowed a very tiny insect or bird that made his voice the way it was. He stood in the middle of the common room while the other counselors introduced him, Padraic Keegan is going to be our new social worker, now everybody say hello. She ran up to him, scouring her fingers through his wiry hair, fingering the side of his acne-creviced face, lifting his glasses and trying to touch his eyes until a counselor barked at her to stop. Later, alone, she wondered whether it was a cricket or a thrush or a praying mantis that Padraic had swallowed.

She was sixteen, well into the awkward throes of adolescence, and she wore dresses with patterns of furious flowers flinging themselves around her waist. Her hair was the color of burned grass. She dyed it that way so that it would flare against her black skin.

Her parents abandoned her — her father had gone out for a packet of cigarettes and never came back, her mother had taken to the little white vials. The authorities found Dana locked in a cupboard, rake-thin, blind as the mice that scuttled in nursery rhymes, while her mother sat in the corner of the room and rocked on the balls of her toes, a bouquet of crack pipes around her feet. When she saw the badges, she just shrugged. Take her, she ain’t mine no more.

Padraic pored over her files during his first week of work — she had taken swallows from bottles of Lysol, tried to hang herself with her shoelaces, defecated on a counselor’s hairbrush, shorn off another girl’s hair. At night, he would sit and read the file over and over, trying to make sense of the legion of quick signatures that cluttered the bottom of the pages. He would watch her in the common room, fingering the curtains. Once, in the back laundry room of the home, he saw her take a can of spray paint and begin to daub another girl’s clothes. He talked to her about ordinary things — how she needed to learn to fold her towel neatly, control her temper, hold a pencil properly, stop biting her nails down to the quick. Sometimes he tried to describe colors to her, but the words broke down into a meaningless frenzy. He had a heavy caseload — seven boys and three girls — but Dana took up most of his time.

“You know what your name means?” he asked her one evening when they sat down to dinner.

“Nothing but a name.”

“Well, yours is a bit different.”

“Yeah sure.”

“Okay,” he said. He moved the fork around his plate, made a loud noise with it.

“No,” she said suddenly. “Tell me.”

Late into the evening he told her about Dana, the Irish goddess who was believed to have come from North Africa in ancient times. Dana was in charge of a tribe of druids, the Tuatha de Dannan, who landed on a fair May morning and conquered the country by ousting the Firbolgs, the men with the paunchy stomachs. She had magic that could control the sea, the mist, the sun, and the very sounds and shapes of the morning. They lived in a wild country where trees ran on one another’s backs until they reached either ocean. Her tribe had made tunnels in vast mounds and built fairy forts down by the sea. They held four talismans of high power — the long sword and spear that had never been defeated, the stone of destiny, and the boiling cauldron for punishments.

“Ya mean they boiled people?”

“Eh, maybe.”

“Cool.” Dana was clanging her fork. “You ain’t shittin’ me?”

“Not a bit.”

“She a witch, like?”

“Not really. If you want, I’ll read you bits from a book,” said Padraic.

“You talk funny,” she said, chuckling.

For weeks afterward she threw questions at Padraic. How old was Dana? How did she die? Was she black? Was she blind? Did she wear colored clothes? They were questions he couldn’t answer. Sometimes she would stalk around the hallways of the home, a towel thrown around her like a shawl, bumping into the doorways and the flower stands. She listened intently to the stories that he read to her. Once, he found in her notebook a drawing of a woman with four fluid faces meshed into one another, two of them sightless, two of them mesmerized by a river of yellow hair, all of them black. Padraic was amazed that she could draw like that.

On Saturday afternoons they walked toward the park. It was an area of furtive glances, shutters heavy over shop windows, basketball courts hemmed in with chicken wire, red brick tenement houses. They sat on wooden benches between a line of birch trees, whittling away the hours. Padraic talked to her of somewhere different, someplace where her namesake had been long ago. Dana imagined thick forests, boats made from the hides of cows, valleys where drizzling rain settled heavily on long grass.

One afternoon, after signing a welter of day-release passes, he took Dana home to meet Orla. Orla, a music scholar, played the cello for an hour. Dana fell asleep on the sofa. Later they brought her down to the sea, where she recoiled in fear at the touch of the cold water. Back up on the boardwalk, they huddled together under a long blue scarf. Then they rode the giant wooden roller coaster at Coney Island, and afterward, Dana begged them again and again to bring her back to the edge of the waves, which they did, all of them shivering in the slicing wind.

“How far is Ireland?” asked Dana.

“A long swim,” he said.

“I’ll wear a big coat,” she said, bundling herself into the blue scarf.

* * *

“I hate it there now,” he says to Orla as he sits on the side of the bed. “Ya should’ve seen it this morning when they heard they couldn’t go to the wedding. Howling and lashing at the doors, they were. Charlie kicked the stereo to bits. Marcia tried to slit her friggin’ wrists. Stephanie was calling me a sperm drinker.”

“Good morning, and I love you too,” says Orla. “Ya big sperm drinker.”

Padraic laughs and tugs at his shoelaces. “Some day for a wedding, huh?”

“Ah, it’s not too bad, as far as I can see,” she says, climbing out of bed and walking over to the window to part the curtains, letting the light drone in on their tiny bedroom. “At least the sun is shining. We got married in the pissings of rain, remember?”

“Yeah, but we were normal and that was Ireland.”

“Since when was Ireland normal?”

“Listen, close the curtains, would ya, love? I want to get a few hours kip. I’m knackered.”

“Okay,” says Orla. “I’m going to practice. Don’t forget. The church at three o’clock.”

“Last place in the world I want to be.”

“You’re giving her away.”

“Exactly,” he says, placing his glasses on the bedside table and pulling the sheets around his head.

The music from Orla’s cello curls around the room and punctuates the roar of traffic outside. Padraic dozes with thoughts of Dana thundering in his head. He sees a cupboard and a little girl huddled under blankets, listening. He hears the poem that he sometimes quoted her when they walked in the park. For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. He sees the small hand lost in a huge gold wedding band. He remembers strolling in the park with the echoing mythology of Ireland. Come away, stolen child. Her tiny frame with the lopsided walk, the shock of hair, the eyes lost in her head, the quiet anger. The afternoon when she left the home comes back to him in a flood of colors — she had packed her green mascara, braille books with blue covers, flowery skirts, a blue Yankees hat. As she gathered up the bits and pieces, he tried to convince her that there was another way, though he couldn’t say what it was.

Waking from his nap he sees Orla at the stove, cooking lunch. He comes up behind her, puts his arms around her waist, as she watches the soup boil on the old stove.

“I really don’t want to go,” he whispers again.

She leans her head back on his shoulder.

“He’s a freak, for crying out loud.”

“Maybe she loves him.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Listen, love,” says Orla. “I graduate in six months. We can leave then. Go back to Ireland. Or you can get that job in Oregon.”

“Ah, Jesus,” he says, turning away from her. He shuffles over to the wall and stares at a print that hangs in a crooked frame. “I’m really tired of it, hon.”

“Have a bowl of soup. You’ll feel better at the wedding.”

“I will in me arse.”

“There too,” she laughs.

“To hell with the soup.…”

“We already rented your suit.”

“The place’ll be full of freaks.”

“You and your freaks,” says Orla. “Would ya give it a break, for crying out loud?”

* * *

Dana met Will in the park. He sat in his wheelchair, wearing a long roll of gray beard that went down to his stomach, as if growing it in order to cover the place where he had no legs. He was more than twice her age. Paperback books about Vietnam curled dog-eared in his overcoat pockets. When he was eighteen his country had given him a haircut, a set of camos, a survival pack, and a machine gun and sent him off to the war. While he was in Saigon, Will’s mother sent him a postcard saying that he was safe because he came from a good Christian family and he was “washed in the Blood of the Lamb.” When he came home, in an airplane full of cripples and body bags, he wrote a note to his mother on the inside of a matchbox. He told her that, yeah, she was right but she spelled it wrong, although “Nam” just happened to rhyme.

Dana didn’t tell Padraic about the man she met in the park. She began to get free rein and was allowed to walk down to the park on her own in the afternoons. She came back to the home, her face flushed. He wrote florid reports about her in the bottom of her file. She had begun to learn braille. He ordered books full of folklore from Ireland and read the stories. Under a special government program she learned how to walk with a guide dog. She drew more pictures of her own mythical Dana. They gained a more singular form, the colors vibrant and wild, the edges sharper, the lines less violent. Padraic began to wonder what might happen if she went to art college, and late in the evenings, he searched through brochures, flicking along through the photos of colleges smothered in autumn leaves, small New England spires rising in a background of hills, handsome men in overcoats and young women with healthy flushes in their cheeks. When he told her that he might be able to get her a scholarship, she just smiled and nodded her head.

He was in his office when another counselor told him that Dana was going to get married. He laughed at first. He had seen Will before, recognized him from the subway cars, where he regularly rattled a tin can, negotiating his chair through the crowd. There was a ferocious sadness in the veteran’s eyes that made everyone on the carriage turn the other way while he spun along, clanging the tin can back and forth, held in gloves that had no fingers. He lived in a small hovel just down the road from the children’s home, a black hole of other refugees and veterans, a place that seemed to invite a peculiar brand of bitterness.

When Padraic asked Dana about the wedding, she just raised her head, flung her fingers through her hair, and said that Will loved her, that nothing could stop her. They sat there, silent for a long time, the young girl fidgeting at her blouse, tears collecting at the edge of her cheeks. He went to the window, saying nothing as Dana shuffled out of the office. Later she asked him if he would give her away at the ceremony. He agreed but went for a long walk in the park and noticed for the first time how many eyes, blue and brown and green, were watching him as he threw small birch branches into the pond.

* * *

When Padraic and Orla arrive at the church, the pews are quite empty. Some of Will’s friends are gathered up near the altar, leaning in over the wheelchair and fixing the groom’s narrow, pale blue tie. Will is taking a furtive sip from a small bottle, wiping the sweat from his palms up and down his artificial legs. He has bought a new pair of fingerless gloves for the day. The priest seems drunk, stumbling out of the sacristy with a red stain on the front of his vestments. Vietnam vets with long hair and NO NUKE badges are running around with video cameras perched on their shoulders like rocket launchers.

A crowd of about thirty is gathered, including six of the blind kids from the home, brought along by two of the counselors. There are four guide dogs in the aisles, and one of them is barking loudly. Somebody must have changed their mind about the rule, but Padraic notices that neither Jimi nor Marcia nor Chocolate Charlie is there — they must have been put on room restriction after last night’s fracas.

Orla kisses Padraic gently on the cheek and takes her seat near the front. He stands at the back of the church, waiting. He nods to a few people, shoves his hands deep into his pockets, mutters under his breath, then cranes his neck around to the parking lot. Dana eventually arrives in a battered Oldsmobile, long white ribbons in a frenzy on the hood. Her wedding dress is long and drawn tightly around her waist. Makeup is smudged around her eyes. Her hair is pulled into a bun at the back of her head. She holds a small bouquet of flowers. Padraic walks to the car and guides her by the elbow toward the church steps while a few guests snap their cameras.

“Padraic,” she says. “Do I look okay?”

“You look great.”

“Really?”

“Fabulous.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s always time to change your mind, you know.”

“You’re like my father now,” says Dana, leaning close to him. “You’re not supposed to say things like that.”

He draws her arm tightly to his. Someone plays the wedding song on a guitar, the tune high and twangy. For a moment he tries to describe the church to her, the stained-glass windows, the rows of shoulders, the guide dogs at the side of the pews, the priest swaying slightly in the center of the altar, but he knows she’s not listening. He walks slowly with Dana up the center of the aisle as heads swivel. When the priest comes to take Dana up toward the altar, the smell of alcohol wafts through the air. She moves away easily, and Padraic sits down with a hefty thump beside Orla.

“Here we go with the show,” he says.

He holds his wife’s hand as the ceremony begins, but it’s a twisted affair — the priest stumbling over the vows, the video cameras with their little red dots arranged like measles around the church, a dog wagging its tail gently in the aisle. The sermon is brief, the priest making a comparison to the wedding at Canaan. Will and Dana fumble with the rings, and Padraic watches as Will leans his bearded face upward toward the bride to kiss her. The guitar clangs out an old sixties hit.

“Let’s get home,” Padraic whispers as lightbulbs flash near the altar.

“What about the party?” whispers Orla.

“Thunderbird and dog biscuits.”

“Jesus Christ, have some heart, will you?”

“Yeah, well.”

“Get off your yeah-well arse and follow her down the aisle,” she whispers, pushing at his ribcage.

He watches Will negotiate his wheelchair along the altar ramp. The veteran’s beard has been groomed for the day. He catches Padraic’s eye and winks for some reason. Padraic nods back. Dana’s face is creased into a tremendous smile. She shuffles down the steps of the aisle with the help of the priest, then moves toward Will’s wheelchair, where he’s waiting. Instinctively she reaches out for the handles, finds them, and begins to push the chair along. The heels of Dana’s shoes catch in her dress, but she regains her footing and begins to strut along the aisle, pushing the chair. A big laugh erupts around the church as she does a strange little skip in the air while pushing the chair.

Some of Will’s friends at the entrance have ripped up small pieces of colored paper for confetti.

From behind, Padraic notices that Dana and Will seem joined together somehow as she wheels him along the outside ramp, the paper falling around their shoulders. “A little bit to the left,” shouts Will, “watch out for the railings!” The colored paper falls around their shoulders. A bottle of champagne gets popped, and the priest reaches forward for a plastic glass. A crowd gathers around the newlyweds, and in the throng, Dana drops her bouquet of flowers. She whispers something in Will’s ear and he gets her to spin the wheelchair around. She does it easily, calmly.

Padraic moves across to pick up the flowers, but he feels Will’s hand grasp his.

“I’m all right, man,” the veteran says.

“I’ll just grab the flowers here.”

“I’m all right,” he says again.

“You sure?”

“Got the legs back.”

“Yeah,” says Padraic, unsure of what he means.

“And a pair of eyes for her.”

“Yes, yeah.”

“Ya know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.”

“We’ll look after each other,” says Will.

“Yeah.”

“You know how it is.”

“I do, yeah,” says Padraic.

“All we’re looking for now is a couple of skin grafts,” says Will, gesturing toward Dana. He lets out a huge bellowing laugh. He turns around to Dana: “Did ya hear that? We’re looking for skin grafts next.”

Padraic steps back, embarrassed. He shoves his fists deep into his pockets. A flush rises up in his cheeks. He backs away from the crowd and watches as Will places the flowers back in Dana’s hands. He has never really noticed before how attractive Dana is, how her fingers run delicately into long nails, how strands of hair run amok around her neck, how her skin gains color around her eyes. The crowd moves around Will and he reaches out, shakes hands, guides Dana’s elbow toward other hands. Padraic wants to walk over to them to say something, anything, he’s not sure what, something that suggests that strange things often happen, that certain moments are all too rare to be lost. But he simply stands there, rooted to his shadow.

He finds himself thinking of the children’s home — Chocolate Charlie lounging around by the smashed stereo, balancing a soccer ball on his foot; Marcia watching the thin scab grow again on her wrist; Jimi hiding a pair of matches under his pillow. Tomorrow morning they’ll crowd around him, asking a million questions about the wedding. Toast will be thrown in the dining room. A pair of socks will be lost in the laundry. A fight will break out in the cafeteria. All the ordinary bits and pieces of seconds, minutes, hours, will clatter on, regardless.

Padraic scuffles at his shoes, noticing that he forgot to polish them. He looks for Orla in the crowd. He sees her at the edge of the church steps, two plastic glasses in her hands. He pulls his hands from his pockets and moves toward her. She raises the champagne in the air and he nods back, slowly at first, like a bird beginning to peck at a few crumbs lying on the ground.