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It is a bright day. I am sitting in sunlight. There are long shadows, and we are encouraged to count backwards, to see our lives in reverse.
It is like having lost something, retracing your steps. It is myself that is missing. It is my turn, says the English nurse, so I tell to her how I came back from the dead.
I tell her: when I died they put flowers up the Main Parade.
…
When I died they put flowers up the Main Parade. There had been a mistake.
When I’d been taken away then wires had been crossed. They thought I was dead for real, for keeps. So they left the flowers, in bunches and in wreathes, dripping and wilting, hallowing up the place. All kinds of flowers. The edges were yellow and sepia tone, curling like flypaper, or loose leaves of overcooked bacon.
Nobody had thought to ask. Nobody had thought to check. It was to be expected, after all.
It upset my mother. She took it to heart, furiously dabbing her newly red eyes. Take them away, she cried to Red Bernard, tugging the shoulder of his shirt. Somebody tell them, take them away.
These are for purity, these are for strength, these are for atonement, these are for immortality. Sunny knew the names of flowers, and their secret special meanings. We drove, deciphering petals. These are for remembrance, these are for forgiveness, these are for eternal beauty. In the back of the car, beneath the red check picnic blanket, he put his hand on top of mine. Myrtle means forever, he said, means love in absence, lost at sea.
To this mantra I half slept, while he solved the riddle of my floral tribute, the language of flowers like a cryptic cross-word. These are for mourning, these are for apologies, these are for born again. My swimming head, adrift in a sea of botanical sweet nothings, thought these properties of plant life were my brand new superpowers.
These are for sorrow, these are for fate.
I’m dead, I told him, so I might as well be dead. Flowers up the Main Parade, that’s as much as dead means, that’s the whole distinction. I’m a ghost, I said, I’m a shade, a blur. And I laughed.
Mammy went, it isn’t funny, but it was. I felt loose and rootless, like the severed stems of my several bouquets. With all the flowers how was I supposed to remember, how would anybody tell, how would I know if I was dead or not?
How would I keep from outliving myself?
…
The boys from school give me a guard of honour. Ryan and Joe and Thomas flanked the narrow curb in front of the house. Lucia shooed them away, flapping at them with a tea-towel like they were a chip pan fire she was trying to put out. Away with you, she goes, he needs his rest.
On one round raised hip she dandles my babby brother. He’s really too big for that kind of thing. He is having a wail of a time. Shanna-anna-anna-anna, he goes.
In the kitchen there are covered dishes, all clingfilmed, silverfoiled and ovenproof. Everybody’s been so good, Mammy said, and she’s scouring at her eyes again. It hasn’t been easy, God knows, God knows.
Poor Mammy. She is on her own once more. My stepfather is nowhere to be seen. I put out my hand and touch the sleeve of her coat. Sorry, Ma. She brushes me off, goes no, no, no, it doesn’t matter. Lucia says she will put the kettle on.
…
Having been dead I could get away with most things. They took me home, put me to bed and forgave me my trespasses.
I tell the English nurse in the sky-blue dayroom how my miraculous recovery was the order of the day. People were hungry, I tell her, the presence of God was thin on the ground so they clutched at my close call like straw.
They'd have been shocked to know how little it meant.
…
They put me to bed and forgave me my trespasses. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. I wanted to sleep. I listened to the water in the pipes. I listened to the rain on the roof. I could not sleep. Sunny come stood by the window. I’m supposed to see if you want anything, he goes, do you want anything?
I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. I reached out my hand for him. He sat on the bed. It was all a bit much. Mammy and Lucia and Bernard. The boys from school. The flowers and covered dishes and Padraic at the hospital, teary-eyed and shaking. The God knows and the thank the lords and the saints be praised. I felt miraculous, ambiguous, exhausted.
It’s only you’re tired, he said. You need sleep. Long sleep. Deep sleep. Codladh fada, codladh domhain. That’s poppies or violets, that is. I ask him do the dead have their own flower? Marigolds, he says, but you’re not dead.
I close my eyes and beg to differ.
…
In the old songs there is a life of lives, there is a world without end. In the old songs there are one thousand ways of describing the same eternity.
I half-dream. Nana is gone. Our songs are short-lived, abbreviated. Where is our eternity? We are bereft of eternity. That is us, the way it is. Nana is gone. I made her go. I made the dead go. I make the dead go by forcing my fist in to my stomach, by scratching to unpick my stitches, by twisting and pinching at my own flesh until the wound weeps.
If anybody saw me they would be upset. They wouldn’t understand.
People come. They bring things. Canned foods, baked goods. They ask is there anything they can do. They tell my mother I am brave. They say it is a miracle. They say I am lucky. They confuse the two things, God and chance. Maybe they are not confused. Maybe it is the same, at least as far as we’re concerned. I sit at the table, bruised and bent double, ignoring them.
It is not fair. I am unequal to their misapplied meaning, to the heroic weakness they want from me. I do not want them to be pleased with me, to be glad, to be impressed, just because I survived. It was a pretty paltry sort of resurrection, my heart had stopped, that's all, for no more than eleven seconds. I was barely gone. I came back here. The distance is short. What is it to celebrate?
Only Lucia understands. She comes in the morning to take my brother to nursery. She sits with me in the afternoon when Mammy goes out to the shops. Do you believe in miracles? I ask her. Yes, she says, but not here. Lucia explains how God would know better. He wouldn’t go foisting his miracles on us. He wouldn’t be that cruel. He would know it was the last thing we needed. Why is everybody looking at me like that, Luci?
‘Cause need’s not the same as want, pet, ‘cause people don’t know what’s good for them. It was a hard year, pet, it was a long winter.
When the boys come round Joe poked my belly with a felt-tip pen Does it hurt if I do that? He goes.
Yes, stop it.
…
I been home a while when Ryan come for me. Jim wants a word, he goes, leaning in the doorway, casual like. I ask him why, what did I do? Ryan just shrugs. You coming, or not? He said.
Because I was still hobbled Frankie agreed to walk me. We went silently down where the flowers had been, but somebody had seen they’d been cleared. Only a couple of frayed ribbons remained, flying surrender from the chain-link. I look at Frankie and she shakes his head, sucking air over his teeth. The Welshman took them down, he said. He means Francie McEvoy, who is always doing things for my mother, trying to court her favour.
It’s alright, goes Frankie, you ain’t done nothing wrong. He walked slow and close to keep me upright. He keeps his hand at a discreet distance from the small of my back. He doesn’t say God knows or saints be praised or any of that bollocks. He doesn’t say much at all. I wish he was my big brother too.
Frankie leads me along the path and in through the front door. This is rare and I’m already wary and half-afraid. I can smell smoke and hear the muted thrum and babble of voices from the kitchen. Frankie goes for me to wait where I am, and he seems to take forever to walk from one end of the hall to the other. I do not feel well. My belly is itchy and aggravated. My head is light. I am sweating. I wipe the palms of my hands against the legs of my jeans. I lean against the telephone table.
On the wall there are photos, of Big Jim and Eileen, of Ryan and his Mammy, Ryan’s Da and his grandparents. There are photos of Ryan’s uncle with a man who looks like Padraic, only younger, and there’s a face amongst a crowd of men is supposed to be Mammy’s brother, after who I am named. Used to fascinate me, these pictures. Now I think they are dull eyed and just about as dead as each other, suspended in a flat-faced staring limbo between the yellowing ceiling and the purplish carpet.
Frankie seems to have been gone a long time. The out of sync clock keeps time by tutting under its breath. When he finally emerges he does so head and shoulders first, half born through the kitchen door. He beckons me with great urgency. I walk towards him, preparing to hold my breath like I am about to be ducked under water.
The lights are ablaze in the kitchen. Michelle and Eileen kiss me on the cheek, and Joe pops paper streamers in my face. Ryan's uncle raises a bottle of beer. It's good to have you back, lad, he says.
I stand there, blink and goggle. Drunk Jim sways like a dancing bear, his big head shaggy as a Saint Bernard dog. He brings his face close to mine, the whiff of his hot breath making me wince. Scratched, I am, by the shag-pile prickle of his spade shaped chin, massively bebearded. He asks me how I’m feeling and I shrug. He claps me on the shoulder. You and me, he says, you and me will have a talk, later on, later on we’ll talk. You’ll take a drink? He asks me.
When it gets dark out we go in the living room. Eileen puts the five-bar on and settles us in to the sunken sofa set. Big Jim makes room for me, fussing and clucking ‘cause the drink’s gone to his head. It makes him emphatic but clumsy, kind but brutish. He gives me his seat by the fire. It’s alright, Mister O’Donnell, I go. Big Jim stands, resting his weight on the mantelpiece. It groans beneath his bulk like straining sea-bound timbers. He smiles at me. He tells me I look so much like my dear dead uncle. He tells me I am a man now. He tells me please, please, please to call him Jim.
Everybody stares, ‘cept Ryan. Ryan looks at the floor.
The warm room is making me sleepy. I’ve taken on board too much beer. Big Jim sends Ryan for whiskey. He fills my glass for me. He calls me young Mister Ó Dubhuir. I don’t quite understand what is going on. I don’t quite understand what is expected of me.
Me, with the flowers. Me, like my dear dead uncle. Me, with my miraculous recovery. Which is it to be? Do they want me to be dead or alive? Am I myself grown up or somebody else born again? Is that it, what I’ve become, nothing better than a second attempt? I don’t feel angry. I feel loose and light-headed. I fell like I’m drifting away. I feel powerful and inconsequential. I could move mountains and mean nothing. It’s probably the drink.
Big Jim goes he’s got a present for me.
Ryan scuffs at the carpet like he’s grinding out an invisible cigarette. I try to catch his eye, but he ignores me. He mutters something under his breath. He surls sulkily, biting his bottom lip. One thing is clear, whatever I’ve become, wherever I’ve gone, I can never come back. Ryan and I will never be friends again.
Because he wanted to be stabbed, not me.
Eileen goes out and she brings in this packet, all wrapped up with last year’s Christmas paper and bundled around with string. She hands it Jim who thrusts it at me. I want to reach out and touch it, but something inside prevents me. My arms hang slack and my mouth is dry. Really, Mister O’ Donnell, I say. but Big Jim cuts me down quick. I told you to call me Jim, son. Now, open your present.
Oh, but it is a beautiful thing. Beautiful and brand new. I have never owned anything brand new before, even at Christmas and birthdays it was always hand-me-downed and shared-alike. The leather is all posh softeness and the label sewn in to the collar attests to its genuine dead cow status. I start to say I can’t accept this. I start to say it’s too much. I think I might cry like Mammy, that time when Bill bought her the perfume and pearls. I think, so that settles it then, I am reborn, this is my second skin, black and soft and smooth to the touch. Tough enough to withstand the harsh winters.
I can’t… I can’t…
Don’t be daft, kid, goes Frankie, fell off the back of a lorry, that did, nobody bankrupted themselves, try it on. I shake my head but the magnetism is too great and I’m already struggling out of my old coat with the too-short-sleeves, quite despite myself.
I slide inside an I feel invulnerable. A cartoon now, with my own bold black outline. When I’m in my ink nobody can hurt me. I am impervious to pain. Immortality made easy.
Frankie stands me up and pats me down. I crane my neck to see myself in the mirror above the fireplace. I can see Joe and Michelle on the couch, pissed up and squeezing each other’s knees. I can see Eileen poised with a try of something, standing in the door, her forty-fags-a-day teeth yellow in a smile behind a pinky-red mouth that looks like a squashed tomato. I can see Ryan silently hating, gathering strength for a coming storm, and Sunny who is propped on one elbow on the arm of the corner seat. He mouths to me, you look nice.
I colour. But I am unable to see myself.
In my place is the black and white photograph face. In my place is Nana’s first-born son, dead in a ditch. I realise too late I been body-snatched. I realise to late what I am is only a replacement. A replacement in a long line of replacements, like Big Jim’s frozen cockatiels. And the look on his face is not pleasant. The look on his face that is greed and complicity. He is raising a toast. He is sucking me in. He is calling the shots. He is ruling my life. All of our lives. I am not dead. I never was anything to begin with. I am fulfilling a function, is all, I am filling a space.
Shannon? Says Frankie. Steady there, son.
I try to tell Frankie I ain’t feeling well. I try to tell somebody I want to go home, I’ve got to get away, we all have. But I can’t. I can’t make my mouth work and everyone’s telling jokes at my expense. They say how I’m drunk, how there’s not enough of me to soak up the alcohol. I feel desperate. I see Ryan walk away, trailing his arms loosely to the kitchen.
I give up.
…
I drank more than I should, much more. They let me because that is what men did. And Ryan’s uncle wanted me drunk. He took me to one side and asked me what I’d said, about who I had talked to.
No one, Mister O’ Donnell.
I told you lad, call me Jim.
No one. Nobody, Big Jim.
He pulls me to him, top man, he goes, top man. He squeezes my shoulders. It hurts. I want to piss. I want to pull away. The smell off him is booze and it’s sweat and it’s fear.
And if anybody asks…
The police?
Anybody.
It wasn’t anybody. We just went down. Nobody planned it. It wasn’t you.
I’m having trouble with my words but the general gist is there and I can tell he’s pleased with me ‘cause he shakes me out at arm’s length. He tells me I grew up good. I feel unhappy. I want to ask how this adulthood was arrived at. Was it while I was sleeping?
It isn’t fair. But that’s not the thing that’s getting to me. What I now see is that there was never any reason to expect or to hope for fairness in the first place. What amazes me is that I ever thought it existed. Like the living. Who are they, after all? And, now that I think about it, have I ever seen one?
When Big Jim turns me loose I haul myself up the stairs by the banister and lock myself in to the bathroom. I am sick. I curl up on the floor with my head on the tiles. I stay like that for quite some time. I am alone. I am utterly alone, confined and encoffined in the cool box of the shower stall.
I have lain there for an hour, maybe more, sore and stress-positioned. There is music downstairs and the rising smoke is making it harder to breathe. I long to be outside and taste fresh air. I want to have gone back with Pa. Why didn’t he rescue me? If he loved me so much why did he leave me here? I am feeling very sorry for myself. There is a knock on the door. Shanahan? Shannon, are you alright? Shannon, let me in. Are you sick? Let me in.
I lurch upright in stages. I feel like my body where some kind of inflatable, filling slowly with a gas just that little bit denser than air. When I slide off the latch, Sunny elbows inside.
He has to hold on to me to prevent us both from toppling back in to the bath. His eyes look black and bright. He has a slow, stoned, lopsided smile. We stand, pressed together, warm from each other’s body heat. Aren’t you feeling well? He asks me. You’re really white.
My stomach hurts.
You want me to have a look?
Yes.
He lifts my T-shirt and I gasp.
What?
Your hands are cold.
He shakes his head. I should smack you, he goes, I thought it was something serious. I rest my chin on his shoulder. I let him touch me. I let him peel back the dressing and probe the angry edges of my scar tissue. I trust him, and him alone. What’ve you been doing to it? He asks me. Shannon, it don’t look right. I sigh, slump down on the edge of the bath. We are the dead, Sunny. All of us are already dead.
I feel sloppy and churned up inside. He has to told my hair while I’m sick in the toilet. Poor Shanahan, he says, poor Shanahan. I’m not fucking crazy, I tell him between heaves, you know that, don’t you? I don’t want this, Sunny, how do you give it back, how do you stop becoming yourself?
Shush, he says, you need to go home to bed.
…
It is a bright day, but you see, there is no backwards. Eternity is not the furthest point from where you are, it is the impossible paralyzed closeness of another day. This is the life of lives. This is world without end. That is the truth of it, to live without momentum or potential, belittled and belated, sunk so far deep in the groove of a downward curb that there is no escape. An Irish Eternity is something narrow and entrenched, our gestures are epic but hollow, human but weak, buried under a hundred weight if banality and brutalism. We live without solace, unreflecting and unrepentant, because there is nothing to aspire to and nowhere left to fall.
We are the dead, before we are born. We are dead to survive. Ours is the deadness of necessity.
It is a bright day. The English nurse in the sky-blue day room doesn’t understand. I am not sure I do either. I tell her but when I realised that I was dead I didn’t see Nana or her legions anymore, not for many years. I tell her there was, at least, freedom in that.
The freedom of not mattering. The freedom to destroy yourself. The freedom to let yourself be destroyed.
…
By the time Frankie takes us home neither of us could stand straight enough to piss. Come on with you, boys, he goes, what’re you doing up there?
Shanna’s sicking.
I’ll bet he is, and I’m surprised you’re not.
Nah, my wings are like a shield of steel. Whoa.
Frankie laughs, as his brother slithers half over the banister. Fuck, goes Sunny, I’m banjaxed.
No kidding. You coming back with us, Shanna?
I just stay here, Frankie.
Can’t send you home to your Ma like this.
I just stay here.
He tsks. Eileen, he says, you help me get the boys back. Kay so, says Eileen, Ryan, you help Frankie get your friends home. Make Jim do it, says Ryan and pushes past us where we’re milling in the hall. I try to grab hold of Ryan’s shirt. Ryan, Ryan, you don’t understand, it doesn’t matter, we’re dead.
Somewhere behind me a door slams.
I don’t remember the walk home. Or I only remember bits. The moon is thin, like the skin on the top of rancid milk. There are cats and there are foxes, red-eyed menaces, slinking underneath the gates, and between the slats of the broken fences. A mist has settled over everything. We climb the stairs to the flat block feeling dizzy, like the air up there is thin.
Frankie drops us down on to the warm unmade mess of his bed. He goes to turn on the light but the electric’s been cut off. He opens the curtains instead and bathes us all in a swathe of pale grey-blue. There you go, boys, he says, pulling off boots and coats. He rolls us around so we are roughly symmetrical and throws the duvet over us. You alright there, invalid? He goes.
I just stay here, Frankie. I sleep here.
That’s right, kid, you sleep here.
Frankie goes out to sleep on the couch and Sunny rolls over, his nose pressing against my neck. It’s okay, he whispers, thickly.
We’re dead, Sunny, we’re dead.
No, he says, no we’re not. We’re alive. You’re alive. I’m alive. Look, like this. You feel that? That’s you, that is, that’s you alive.
…
It is a bright day. The English nurse is smiling. I stare back at her, because she does not understand. Sunny was wrong. The shadows are long. There are marigolds outside, ragged manes mangy in the dirt beds.
------
The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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we are not amused
