Tell Me What I Am, page 1
UNA MANNION
Tell Me What I Am
for Dúaltagh, Brónagh and Aoibhín
You have often
Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp’d
And left me to a bootless inquisition,
Concluding ‘Stay: not yet.’
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished.
Thomas De Quincey,
‘The Palimpsest of the Human Brain’
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
PART I
1. Ruby
2. Nessa
3. Ruby
4. Ruby
5. Ruby
6. Ruby
7. Nessa
PART II
8. Nessa
9. Nessa
10. Ruby
11. Ruby
12. Ruby
13. Nessa
14. Nessa
PART III
15. Nessa
16. Ruby
17. Ruby
18. Nessa
19. Nessa
20. Ruby
21. Ruby
PART IV
22. Nessa
23. Nessa
24. Ruby
25. Ruby
26. Nessa
27. Ruby
28. Nessa
29. Ruby
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
PART I
1
Ruby
May 2018, The Islands, Vermont
From the open door of the coop, a needle of light fell across the hen’s egg – mute blue in a nest of pine shavings – a misshapen moon, or one of the pale-green pills the doctor prescribed for Clover. Ruby wrapped her fingers over it, turned her palm up. She considered the weight of the egg, how it moulded to the human grip so perfectly.
Outside the coop the hens murmured and clucked in their dust baths, old tyres Ruby had filled with sand and wood ash. A happy sound, even though it was mid-morning and she’d only just let them out. Yesterday she hadn’t collected their eggs at all. Put it off, and off. Neglected them. Most nights now they took themselves to bed, a little assembly line heading up the ramp when the sun fell, a sad string of would-be mothers. She’d watch them from the porch, dragging herself down in the pitch dark to shut the coop door.
She squeezed her fingers, pressed the egg tighter: still enough calcium that it didn’t break. That was good. She listened to the soft chatter outside and hated herself. Their beating flightless wings when they saw her coming, their dumb trust, following her around the yard, letting her reach in and take their brood. All that foraging and effort she’d been throwing into the trash or scrambling and feeding back to them. Lucas always said they should: scrambled eggs helped the hens regain nutrients lost while laying. He’d rattle out the list of benefits – protein, calcium, magnesium, vitamins A, E, B6 and 12 – and her thoughts would start to drift.
Every few days Ethan Puckett pulled up in his truck and left a few groceries, cartons of milk, loaves of bread, meals in baking dishes still warm that Adelaide made for Ruby and Clover. Lasagne, macaroni and cheese, maple baked beans, venison. Ruby stacked the cleaned dishes on the bottom step for him to take. All of Clover’s food had to be pureed now because of the stroke; the left side of her mouth still sagged. The blender left Adelaide’s meals a bland lumpy grey. Neither Ruby nor Clover had much appetite. The hens ate Clover’s pureed dinners, as well as their scrambled selves. Ruby had been back home for almost a week. She was so angry with Adelaide and Clover that her stomach stayed clenched.
Ruby stepped outside the dark coop and away from the heavy smell of bedding and manure. Maybe she should give the eggs to Ethan today. Instead of avoiding him when he pulled up, she could thank him for all he’d been doing, mention the heat, the fishing. And hand him a box of eggs. Adelaide could use them. Maybe Ethan could take the hens.
The house phone was ringing. Clover was there but she probably wouldn’t answer. It was hard for her to stand and then she’d have to lumber across the kitchen because they still didn’t have a cordless phone; the caller would have given up. It kept ringing. Ruby put the basket down at the bottom of the steps, stamped up to the porch and let the screen door slam behind her against its aluminium frame. Clover was slouched in her day chair, staring at the TV; her mug of tea had turned milky grey beside her. She didn’t look up.
The phone shook on the wall when it rang, like in a cartoon. Hello, Ruby said, glaring at Clover, but Clover just shrugged her right shoulder, the way she did, up to the ear, which meant something defeated like So what about it, or I don’t want to listen. She had The Price Is Right on loud, her housedress hiked to her knees, bare legs shocking white above inflamed ankles. A pair of pink plastic barrettes held her hair each side of her face, just above the ears. Ruby recognized them as her own, from years ago, and felt a slap of remorse. Clover’s post-stroke fingers grappling with the child’s clasp. The slippers were Ruby’s too: pink faux fur, matted and pilled and too tight on Clover’s swollen feet.
Hello? she said again, the receiver on her shoulder, her hand against the vinyl wallpaper, the once-bright oranges sun-bleached into large spectral patches. There was a pause on the line, like whoever it was hadn’t expected it to be answered after so many rings and was gathering themselves to speak. A woman said, Ruby? Is this Ruby?
Yes, she said, this is Ruby Chevalier. Who’s calling, please? She used the don’t-mess-with-me voice she’d rehearsed for journalists or investigators. Don’t say anything, the lawyer had told her. To anyone. She’d spoken as if Ruby couldn’t grasp how serious all this was. Ruby didn’t even know what it was she might mistakenly say. It wasn’t a journalist, though. Ruby could tell by the halting uncertainty, the out-breath like a sigh, the hesitation. When journalists called they spoke immediately and said things fast, like Hey Ruby, how’ve you been? Familiar, like they knew her, as if she’d be tricked into thinking they’d met before. Nathalie said they’d even waited outside the school, asking kids who she was, to point her out if she showed up. Ruby hadn’t left the house since she’d come back.
The woman wasn’t from around here, the way she said Ruby. The exaggerated vowel sound. She said it again: Ruby. Ruby, this is Nessa. Nessa Garvey. From Philadelphia? Your aunt. Ruby opened her mouth to speak but didn’t really have anything to say.
Ruby’s finger traced a faded petal on the wall. It was barely visible. One of the only times Nathalie had ever stepped inside their kitchen, she’d said to Ruby, Oh my God, That ’70s Show – a phone with a cord, the vinyl, orange and brown, the Formica table.
The woman, Nessa Garvey, Aunt Nessa, started again. Please don’t hang up, she said. Please. Hear me for a minute. Ruby wanted to burst into tears. She glanced over at Clover but Clover wasn’t paying attention. She was writing possible prices for showroom merchandise on the back of an envelope with her right hand. She couldn’t work the other one anymore.
Nessa. A name Ruby remembered on her own. She pushed open the screen door and stretched the cord to sit at the top of the steps. She balanced the phone between her cheek and shoulder to wipe her hand on her shirt because the receiver was slipping, and realized that in her other hand she was still holding the blue egg.
Yeah, she said, go ahead. Her voice didn’t sound like her own.
I don’t know if you remember. You used to live with me. You and your mother? Ruby didn’t say anything. Nessa. Maybe she wanted Ruby to say things to get Lucas in more trouble. The voice wasn’t rude or unkind, but it wasn’t friendly either. She sounded like she was reading from a page. The tremor that had started in Ruby’s lip moved up the muscles on her cheek. She couldn’t still herself.
We’re having a— She stopped, cleared her throat, kept going. We’d like you to come here. You were her whole world. We’ve waited. We had to, you know, at first, but now we’ve waited for you, so you could be here. I’m making this call for her. To ask you. We don’t have to talk about—
Nessa broke off.
We don’t have to talk about your father. We’ve made all the arrangements for you. If you’ll come.
Ruby held the receiver in her lap and looked east toward the Green Mountains, squinting against all the blue – the bright morning, the glare of the lake. The day would be fine. She should move the run to a fresh patch. She’d do that today. Clean out the coop, give them a fresh start; it wouldn’t take long. And she’d reseed the lawn from the sack of clover in the shed. The hens were foraging where the enclosure met the shale, pecking at the clawed brown earth and grey slates, the scratch grain gone and the morning dew long evaporated. One hen’s golden feathers caught the sun, her comb still radiant red, healthy. Beside her a blue-black Ameraucana camouflaged against the shale; beech leaves stirred above them; a motorboat cut across the water, tracing a dark gash in its wake. Everything was still beautiful. The hens were hers. She should keep them.
2
Nessa
8 February 2004, Philadelphia
Nessa heard her sister moving through the house, the creak of floorboards overhead, toilet flush, sink running, the front door clicking shut. Beside her Ronan slept, his lips parted, a soft snore on the breath in. Later she told the detectives she heard the car start on the street. The last sound that connected Deena to the
Maybe an hour after she heard the car, Nessa walked down toward the museum for the papers. She hadn’t worn a scarf or hat and the wind blowing from the river was sharp, stinging her face. Afterward, every detail of that morning became crystallized, refined through repetitions into a series of stills. The naked trees. Her breath making small quick clouds in the air. The patch of ice at the corner of Aspen. The empty sidewalk. The blank grey of it all, everything bare, giving away nothing.
Back at the house she woke him. They drank coffee and read the papers. She repeated something Howard Dean had said about the war in Iraq. Ronan agreed. The Da Vinci Code was still number 1 on the bestseller list. Ronan handed her an article from the New York Times and tapped the headline. It was about the death of Kitty Genovese in Queens. Next month marked the fortieth anniversary. Nessa vaguely remembered the story from a college class. The bystander effect. Thirty-eight people had heard the woman being attacked and no one had done anything.
She watched Ronan dress and pack his bag. One of his socks was black, the other navy blue, his hair sleep-matted at the back. She wished he wasn’t leaving. She listened to the sound of running water in the bathroom and was thinking about the word ablutions when her phone rang. It was Molly: Deena hadn’t shown up for her 7 a.m. shift.
Nessa opened the curtains and looked out the window at the empty space below, where Deena parked her car.
Later the detectives would tell her that Molly McKenna first called her at eight forty-five. When Ronan came back in, ready to go, Nessa was standing in the middle of her room, still holding the phone.
They drove to the train and talked about the things that might have held Deena up – a flat tyre, an accident, an appointment she forgot. Getting out of the car at Suburban Station, Ronan gazed up at the art deco facade. Nessa smiled because she knew he was about to tell her how much he liked it, for maybe the hundredth time. His hair was still flattened and she’d forgotten to tell him his socks were mismatched. Later she would remember watching him look up, and would hold that moment: the last time she was seeing him or anyone before she could never see anything the same again.
Back at the house she tried to read the New York Times article. Kitty Genovese’s brother said that he’d found it difficult to cope after her death and had enlisted in the Marines. All the time he was in Vietnam he had flashbacks about what had happened to his sister. He became obsessed with trying to save people.
*
The bare walls of Deena’s room were painted brilliant white. Everything was in its place. When they’d shared a bedroom at home, Deena’s side had been strewn with empty Coke cans, heaps of dirty clothes, stacks of books. Four years older but ten times messier. Nessa had had to patrol the demarcation line they’d agreed, kicking back wet towels and school kilts. But now Deena’s space was immaculate. If you start arranging my cans in the cupboard by colour we’re done, Nessa had joked when she’d moved in. On the bedside table, a black-and-white photograph of Ruby just after she was born softened the space. In it, Ruby’s head rests on Deena’s bare chest. It is their first moment together, Ruby’s small hand clutching a handful of her mother’s hair. Skin-to-skin, the midwife had said when she put Ruby on Deena’s chest.
Deena’s bookcase was organized by category. Nursing and anatomy on the bottom shelf; above were self-help guides on mental health, ways of rebuilding yourself, books about living with narcissistic men, books on motherhood. Neatly stacked beside them were the journals she’d endlessly scribbled in since high school. The month, the year recorded on the spine of each book, from the age of fourteen. Then the gap, 1999 to 2002, the years with Lucas. He’d taken those and Deena hadn’t been able to get them back. The rest of the shelves were lined with novels and poetry. One volume was balanced horizontally on top: Adrienne Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic – paper strips slipped in to mark the poems she returned to.
Deena had painted the wooden floorboards white too. The order and blankness had initially bothered Nessa, as if Lucas was still bossing Deena around from a distance, making her think she was messy, making her shrink. But she was beginning to understand Deena’s need to control her environment, to be hyper-structured about everything. Lucas had taken so much. The desperation to keep order was her resisting him and all the things he’d said to her about who she was: lazy, chaotic, crazy, whatever. Maybe having order was her way of telling herself she was not those things; maybe it was even a fuck-you. Standing in the emptiness of Deena’s room, the possibility first occurred to Nessa that her sister might never come back.
Nessa counted the scrubs hanging in Deena’s closet. She owned three – one wasn’t there. She had gotten ready for work. In the bathroom the hamper was empty. Her toothbrush sat in its holder. There was a framed card their mother had given Deena for graduation. A Dickens quote with a stethoscope spiralled around it: Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. Deena had hung it in the bathroom. Probably because it was where she got ready every day, a reminder from her mother before she went in to the NICU.
Sometimes their dad called Deena if he wasn’t feeling well. She’d take his blood pressure. She’d bring her stethoscope and let Ruby listen too. Ruby would compare hearts. She’d place the chest piece against her own. Mine’s quiet, Grandad. Yours is noisy. Another time she’d listened to their two hearts and said, Mine’s winning. It’s faster.
Something must have happened at home. Deena was there, looking after him. Nessa ran downstairs to the phone.
Joey answered. He was in a hurry, couldn’t talk. But he said, No, Dad’s asleep.
He stopped at the news that Deena hadn’t shown up at work. He hadn’t talked to her since Friday.
I’ll come in, he said.
*
The John Garvey stencilled on the side of the truck was faded, nearly gone, the & Son slightly brighter. Plaster dust, wood shavings, paint, receipts stuffed between the windshield and dashboard; it was just like their dad’s trucks growing up. The familiarity steadied Nessa. Her phone rang as they merged onto the Parkway. Molly. Deena still hadn’t shown up. The parking garage near the hospital had four levels; they checked every one. The guy in the security booth scanned the camera footage. She hadn’t arrived.
They sat in Joey’s truck with the engine turning over, shivering, waiting for the air to blow hot. Nessa checked the time. One thirty. Six hours until Ruby would need to be collected from her weekend with Lucas.
*
Back at the house they went upstairs to Deena’s room. Joey stood in the middle of it, uncertain what to do. Nessa went into the bathroom and checked the medicine cabinet. Deena’s medication was there; beside it a bottle of Children’s Tylenol.
Joey, maybe something happened to Ruby. Why didn’t I think of that already?
Ruby was sick and Deena had gone over there. Everything made sense.
They decided Nessa should call Lucas, ask to speak to Ruby.
Joey sat next to her, leaning in so he could listen. She exhaled slowly as she dialled, trying to calm herself.
This is Nessa, she said when he answered.
Oh, hi Nessa. How are you?
Joey shook his head slightly at her. This was off. She and Lucas were never polite.
Can I speak with Ruby?
She’s a bit busy right now.
She made up something about Ruby’s fish having babies. He said nothing.
Just let me talk to my niece, Lucas.
Nessa? Ruby’s small voice.
Ruby! How are you?
Good. My grandmom’s here.
What? Their mother had died over a year ago.
Grandma’s there?
Not our grandma. Clover.
Nessa had never met Lucas’s mother. She wasn’t sure if Ruby had either. She didn’t think so.
Did your mommy meet her too?
How?
You didn’t see your mom today?
