Dance Lessons: A Novel

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137 The sound brings Jo running to the back door. There’s the boy, aged five now, standing there in the yard, pitching pebbles against the gable wall. Thwap, thwap, thwap. The curtains are drawn in Mother’s room, the room in the gable of the house. It’s been a week since Father’s funeral. After their Sunday lunch, Mother went to bed to sleep, to keen her rosaries into the shadowy, silent room. Kitty is upstairs packing her suitcase, packing up her black funeral dress and her black patent shoes. “Stop that,” Jo calls to the boy in a loud whisper. “You’ll waken your grandmother.” Here’s a car coming up the avenue. It’s the car that came, that dropped Kitty off when she was summoned for Father’s last hours, his death at three o’clock in the morning. “Stop that,” Jo whispers to the boy again, just as the black car parks outside the yard gate. Kitty comes downstairs and out to the back door. She smells of perfume. She’s wearing a grey swing-back coat and wet-look high boots to her knees. Kitty works in Dublin now. She’s shop floor manager in a large department store on Talbot Street. Tears are trapped in Jo’s throat. She could not swear that the tears are all for Father—or not specifically for his death. No, this awful sadness is for all of this, for her sister leaving, for the impending silence of the house. The boy abandons his little pile of pebbles to walk to the gate, where he stands there, tall for his age, staring through the slats of the gate at the motor car. The man, who is Kitty’s latest Dublin boyfriend, waves through the windscreen at the ragged little boy, then he mimics turning the steering 138 * Áine Greaney wheel round and round. He beckons to the little boy to open the farmyard gate and come and try it out, to play a game of car. But the boy stands there, frozen and unsmiling. He’s perplexed by the man’s smiling, waving presence. At last, Kitty kisses Jo’s cheeks and walks with her brown leather suitcase to the gate and the waiting car. Jo follows a few steps and then stops. It’s not her place to go out there. If Kitty had wanted to, she would have invited Jo out there to make introductions. So Jo stands there, a lone, foolish figure in the middle of the yard. She watches Kitty hoist the suitcase into the back seat. The man comes around to hold the passenger’s door open for her. Kitty kisses the man— right there, in full view of the house and Jo. Then, with a last wave they drive away, the red brake lights going down the avenue. Inside the house there are a million things to get done before Mother gets up again. There’s bread to be made. The boy’s school clothes have to be ironed and set out for tomorrow, Monday morning. The calves’ buckets need scalding before John comes in from the fields. These days, since Father’s death, Mother winces, considers any movement or noise or work in the house as a blasphemy, as disrespect for the dead. So Jo should hurry, tiptoe back into the silent house and finish her jobs. But still she stands there in the yard, transfixed by her own sadness, by this stodgy, leaden grief. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. The boy is back pelting his stones against the gable of the house. He pelts and then walks to the gable wall to collect them from the ground, then returns to his spot to start again. “Stop that,” Jo calls to him. “I told you to stop it.” He stares at her, his eyes wide beneath the curly hair. He should be out helping his father, she thinks. Up in the cow byre and not here just wasting time. His five-year-old’s stare turns sly. Then, he walks toward the gable again, slow and measured, the occasional glance back at his mother. He bends to collect the pebbles again. Then he walks slowly back to his pitching place. Thwack. Jo feels the fury rising. The fury and wailing grief become one. She watches his slow motion, the little hand, the eye on her as he takes a swing, then pelts another pebble. Thwap. [3.16.83.150] Project MUSE (2024...