Perfectly Preventable Deaths

28 Mullein

This morning in the bathroom, there was a bruise on the nape of Catlin’s neck. She whacked it on the edge of the sink, she said. When she was doing something with her hair. It was the size of a two-euro coin. The shape of an egg. An angry purple-blue.

I noticed others, clustering her arms. Green, yellow, brown. The size and shape of little pebbles. Fingerprints. I opened up my mouth to start to ask. Before I drew a breath she started speaking.

‘It’s nothing. I’m clumsier than usual here. Maybe because my brain is taken up with all this love. It can’t be good for me, being so adored.’ She did a swishy arm movement, like she’s a goddess in the middle of a fountain, a bride on top of a cake. More like herself again, the marks aside.

I smiled at her and nodded. But.

Bruising’s when you bleed beneath the skin. Dappled skin, like algal bloom on water. Underneath the surface, she’s been hurt.

Helen Groarke.

I can’t ignore the past. Not any more.

I look at Mam across the kitchen table, wondering how best to bring it up. A time when I could get her on her own.

The three of us are by ourselves here now. Brian is away on business again.

‘What exactly is his business?’ Catlin asks, biting into a slice of toast. ‘You think he’d be able to stick around more, seeing as he’s rich and things.’

‘Rich people have to stay rich,’ I tell her. ‘This castle is a pricey place to live.’

‘I think he could afford to cut back on the heating a little. It’s almost too warm. I keep kicking the blanket off me during the night.’

‘Me too,’ I say.

Mam looks at us. ‘What are ye talking about, girls? It’s freezing here. If I didn’t have three hot water bottles and Brian in the bed, I’d get frostbite.’

‘You should take my bed tonight, Mam,’ I say. ‘Like, I can hop in with Catlin. She won’t mind.’

‘I could mind,’ says Catlin. ‘I don’t. But I could.’

‘You could do anything you want to do,’ I tell her. ‘I believe in you. God Bless America.’

She snorts. ‘Why does no one ever say God Bless Ireland?’

‘Because America sounds more dramatic. And also, God has spent too much time here already, getting nuns to sell babies and whatnot.’

‘The church is not God’s fault, Madeline.’

‘Then whose fault is it?’

‘Yours.’ Catlin glares at me. ‘And I think we’re all overdue an apology.’

‘I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry,’ I tell her, holding my hand to my heart and crying pretend tears. ‘I didn’t know that I was the secret pope.’

‘Well, you do now. So start wearing impressive hats.’

Mam looks at the two of us, her face confused. ‘What are ye on about?’

‘Were you not listening to our interesting and important conversation, Mam?’

‘No, Mad. I was somewhere else. Thinking about Brian. There’s something …’ Her face gets a strange look, like she’s trying to do a quadratic equation without any paper to write it down on.

‘Wife in the attic,’ says Catlin, very matter-of-factly. ‘It’s always a wife in the attic when lads have castles.’

‘I wish he did have a wife in the attic,’ Mam says. ‘She might tell me what was going on.’ She pauses, taking a long slug of tea. ‘I get the sense he doesn’t want to worry me. But if there’s a reason to be worried, I’d rather worry about what it is than about all the potential things it could be, you know? I mean, the castle costs a lot to run. There’s huge pressure on him, and I’m not earning now.’

I feel my throat clamming up. I know more than either of them does. But if I told them … what would I say exactly? Brian knows things. Mamó is a witch, and there are sacrifices in the forest. I don’t think it would comfort anyone to hear that stuff. He did say that he’d tell her, in the kitchen. And he will. He’ll have to. I swallow.

She trails off.

‘That’s probably it. The money thing. I’m just being silly. Every relationship is different. And your father did have secrets too.’

I think of my father’s hands enveloping my small ones – his nails stained with yellow, green and blue. Strange colours for a man or for a garden. Any maybe it’s just flashes in my brain. Something in me filling in the gaps. Colouring in the spaces that he left with bits of people.

Why would I give my father Mamó’s nails?

‘He did?’ Catlin is intrigued. ‘What kind?’

‘I can’t think of any off the top of my head,’ Mam says. ‘But he definitely had at least four.’

‘Maybe Brian is keeping a good secret,’ Catlin says to Mam. ‘Like a surprise holiday. Or a new pony!’

‘You hate ponies, Catlin,’ Mam reminds her. It’s true, she does. One stole her thunder at a birthday party once and she never forgave the species.

‘I know. But the idea of a surprise pony is still kind of good. A sturdy little dude to cart my schoolbooks around. And I’d give him hay and maybe make him a sunbonnet with holes for his ears like in a book or something. Lon would befriend him.’

I think of the grey dapple of a smooth coat, marble mottled. I look at my sister. There are things I want to say and can’t. We fall silent once we’ve left the house, walking up the driveway, past the bare and sweeping ash, the skinny little rowan trees, the hawthorns crumpled up like whipping boys. Yew trees line the journey to the gate. They like to have those sorts of trees in graveyards. And no one’s ever sure how old they are. A hundred years. A thousand. They hollow out with age. A space inside.

At the bus stop, I look at Catlin, twisting around Lon like tangleweed. Her hair all messed. Her happy, perfect face. His mouth. Her neck. I’m so far away from her today.

I think of Oona. Beautiful and strange. Where have you been? I think. Is something wrong? Is it to do with magic? Are you like me? Is everybody something? My brain fills up with question marks and clouds. The bus passes her stop. She isn’t there. I feel it like an ache.

Twigs and plants through the smudged window. Some of them are white as broken bone. Recently, I have been drafting a coming-out speech in my head. The best I can come up with is: ‘Not that my sexuality is any of your business. But I like girls. End of discussion.’ It’s short and to the point, but it would probably end up way more emotional and teary. I get a nervous flutter even considering it. Like if I do, there’ll be no going back. It will be out there.

And the thing is, if I can have such a huge revelation about who I am in such a comparatively short period of time, who is to say I won’t have another one that moves me to a different place again? Maybe I should just say, ‘I am currently identifying as extremely gay, but in the future I may be open to other suggestions. End of discussion. P.S. Magic is real, so the salt stays under your beds.’

I look at Lon’s face at lunchtime, searching for danger. Knowing Catlin doesn’t want me there. I need to tell Brian about this, like Mamó said. And as soon as possible. His reaction will tell me what to do. I think of his conviction that we’re safe here. Because of who his father was, or what. It feels like I am planning to betray her. Because, whatever happens, it will hurt. Lon loves that Catlin loves him. His copper-coloured eyes above her head. When people died in olden times, they used to put coins on their eyelids. To keep them closed. Helen Groarke. Her pale face wasting till she’s earth and bone.

I let myself be ignored for twenty minutes, then I stomp inside.

‘The two of them,’ I say to Charley, and I roll my eyes.

‘I know.’ She smiles. I wonder if she means it, and I squint.

‘Are you OK? You look like you’ve a pain,’ she asks.

I think of Lon, and gesture towards the pub.

‘I might do actually.’

She snorts at this.

‘So, Charley. You never told me the full story about his ex.’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know it to tell, to be honest …’

‘You must know something about Helen,’ I say, threading some of Mamó’s steel through my voice.

She pales at the mention of her name, crosses herself. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Why?’ I glare at her.

She squares her shoulders at me. ‘Don’t try that stuff on me. It doesn’t work.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say, filing this away for future reference. ‘Have you ever kissed Lon?’ I ask.

‘Ugh,’ she says. ‘I’d rather eat a knife.’ Her tone gives me a shiver in my gut.

After school, his eyes on her seem kind, although he scares me. Catlin laughs at something that he says, and pucks him in the stomach. ‘You’re as bad.’

Her face alight with love. I see her happy and I hold my tongue.

One of us should get to be OK.

A normal girl.