Fishing the Sloe-Black River Read Online Free Page A

face cut inward. Age has assaulted her cheekbones. I feel angry. I take down the picture of the Sacred Heart that is spraying red light out into the room and place it face-down on the floor. She murmurs and a little spittle comes out the side of her mouth. So she is there, after all. I look in her eyes again. This is the first time I have seen her since we were still that age. A bitterness in there now, perhaps, borne deep. “I just want some neutral ground,” I say. Then I realize that I don’t know who I’m talking to, and I put the picture back on the wall.
    I sit on the bed and touch her ashtrayed hair. “Talk to me,” I say. She turns slightly. The toast is growing cold on a plate on the floor. I have no idea if she knows who I am as I feed her, but I have a feeling she does. I’m afraid to lay my hand on her for fear of snapping bones. She doesn’t want to be fed. She hisses and spits the bread out of dehydrated lips. She closes her mouth on my fingers, but it takes no effort to pry it open. Her teeth are as brittle as chalk. I lay the toast on her tongue again. Each time it gets moister and eventually it dissolves. I wash it down with some water. I try to say something but I can’t, so I sing a Hoagy Carmichael tune, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. If I tried to lift her, I think I would find a heap of dust in my hand, my own hand, which is speaking to me again, carving out a moving shape.
    I want to find out who is under the bedsheets. “Talk to me.” She rolls away and turns her back to me. I stand and look around the room. It all comes down to a lump in the bed. An empty chamber pot. Some full-bloom chrysanthemums by the window. A white plate with a smear of jam. A dead archbishop on the outside, looking in.
    â€œJust a single word,” I say. “Just give me a single word.”
    Some voices float in from the white corridor. Frantic, I move to a set of drawers and a cupboard to look at the bits and pieces that go to make up Brigid now. I pull the drawers out and dump the contents on the floor. I cannot understand the mosaic. A bible. Some neatly folded blouses. Long underwear. A bundle of letters in an elastic band. Lots of hairpins. Stamps gleaned from the Book of Kells. Letters. I do not want to read them. A painting of a man sowing seeds, by a child’s hand. A photograph of our mother and father, from a long time ago, standing together by Nelson’s Pillar, him with a cigar, her with netting hanging down from her hat. A copy of a newspaper from a recent election. A Mayan doll. Lotus-legged on the floor, I am disappointed with the clutter of somebody else’s life. I haven’t found what I’m looking for.
    I shuffle to the end of the bed and lift the sheets. Her feet are blue and very cold to the touch. I rub them slowly at first. I remember when we were children, very young, before all that, and we had held buttercups to each other’s chins on the edges of brown fields. I want her feet to tell me that she remembers. As I massage I think I see her lean her head sideways and smile, though I’m not sure. I don’t know why, but I want to take her feet in my mouth. I want to, but it seems obscene, so I don’t. “Up a lazy river with a robin song, it’s a lazy, lazy river, we can float along, blue skies up above, everyone’s in love, up a lazy river with me.” She mumbles when I lean over her face and kiss her. There is spittle on her chin and she is horribly ruined.
    I walk to the window. Far off, in the parking lot, I can see Michael, head slumped forward on the steering wheel, sleeping. Two nuns look at him through the passenger window, curious, a cup of tea and some scones in their hands. I watch him too, wondering about the last few days. There’s an old feeling within me that’s new now. Those teeth around his neck. I want a bicycle again. Sequoia seedlings in the basket. I want to ride through a