Dance Lessons: A Novel

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105 She’s going to sleep in Jo’s old upstairs room, where she can hear the old woman knocking through the parlor ceiling. When Ellen got back from the village, Jo was asleep in her bed again, still in her clothes, snoring lightly. Now Ellen sets her overnight bag against the upstairs landing wall. The door at the back of the house on the left of the landing beckons her. It was his room. She knows this. The ceiling light is yellow-dull inside its green tasseled shade. The bedroom smells of old wood and dust. The small window onto the backyard is rimed with dirt and weather. Behind the door is a twin bed with a brown headboard, a blue candlewick bedspread pulled up over the pillows. Taped to the wall above the bed is a child’s collage of blue and red satin ribbons. They’re the prize ribbons you win at a horse or agricultural show. Ellen yanks back the bedspread to a bare mattress, a faded striped print, two uncovered pillows with a mildew smell. She kneels on the bed to read the prize ribbons’ white satin centers, the gold lettering: “Rosie Dowd, Second Prize, Cloonmount Sheepdog Trials, 1978.” “Rosie Dowd. Two-yearolds . Best of Show.” “Mayo Regional Sheepdog Trials.” Elsewhere along the bedroom walls, the green paint is stippled white from where someone once hung posters. In the closet, two long-sleeved, checked shirts hang from the wire hangers . There’s a pair of corduroy jeans, worn at the knees. She leans into this old, wooden armoire to bury her face and sniff his clothes. She searches in each pocket. In one, she finds a torn-off ticket like you get for readmission to a movie theater or a concert. 106 * Áine Greaney The bottom of the armoire is stacked with piles of hardcover books. They’re business management and accounting textbooks. In each flyleaf is Fintan’s erect, pointed handwriting: “Fintan J. Dowd, 23 Oak Grove Avenue, Whitehall, Dublin. If found lost, return to 01-564899.” She turns the books around to read the margin notes in faded pencil. Inserted between the pages are torn-off sheets from a spiral notebook with numbered lists, diagrams. Shoved between the last two heavy volumes are some newspapers: The Connaught People, The Western Farmer’s Journal. The newssheet has turned brittle and yellow. The photos are grainy. April 19, 1977. June 12, 1975. September 25, 1972. Ellen carries the news pages across to the bed, where she sits and spreads the papers out across the blue bedspread. “Fintan Dowd of Gowna, and his dog, Rosie, who won ‘best-of-show’ at the Annual Kiltubber Agricultural Show.” “Fintan Dowd, Gowna, and his sheepdog, Rosie, who took first prize at the Rathloe Sheepdog Trials.” “Mr. Vincent Thornton, manager and sponsor, Bank of Ireland, Ballinkeady , presents a savings bond for twenty pounds to young Fintan Dowd of Gowna, whose dog, Rosie, won first overall prize at last Sunday’s sheepdog trials.” More clippings: a gallery of his young life: at age thirteen, fifteen. A halo of curls, those huge, framed spectacles, a triumphant, beaming grin. In one, he is on his hunkers, his arm around Rosie, just like in the Polaroid photo he brought to America. In another, he’s wearing a Bay City Roller T-shirt, freckled arms; he’s wearing the corduroy trousers in the wardrobe. A paisley-pattern shirt, a huge, butterfly collar, more bellbottom trousers. And here, in the last one, he’s sporting an upper lip fuzz, the shadow of a schoolboy moustache. She looks up from the news clippings, looks cautiously around his old room. The house and the night outside the window are silent, dead silent. She carries the news clippings back to the wardrobe, replaces them where she found them, then piles the other textbooks on top. A yellow envelope drops from a book. It’s addressed to him, that same Dublin address from the books’ flyleaves. She tilts the envelope into the light to read the return address: Miss Carmel Cawley, 10, The Lane, Gowna, Dance Lessons * 107 County Mayo. There’s a greeting card inside, yellow roses in a vase. “Thinking of You.” Folded into the card is another small news clipping. “F, Aren’t we just gorgeous??? Love always, C.” On the card’s left, inside flap: “P.S.: Don’t worry. I might have something...