I raid his fridge but all he has are ultra-healthy grains and seeds and right now I need something greasy to sponge up all the alcohol we consumed last night. “Can we go get a fry-up?”
“Is this really not a big deal to you?” he asks. “Should I expect to get strangled every night? What else happens? Do you leave the house? Is it dangerous?”
For the first time since I woke I force myself to look him in the face. There he is again, pinning me to the bed, stronger in every muscle than I am, something shocked and determined in his eyes and is this how I looked when he woke to the same thing? “It won’t happen again,” I say. “I promise. I have medication I can take.” Another lie. There are no meds that work. But I don’t want him to be scared—for me or of me. I don’t want that look in his eyes, for him to feel the way I felt, waking to his hands pressing me small.
* * *
Three more nights of the same—not strangling, exactly, but thrashing or walking about the apartment and tearing through kitchen cupboards. Niall is terrified I’ll hurt myself. I don’t admit that it’s happening more than usual because I have never been so dislodged from reality as I am in this strange apartment with this unknown man. Instead I ask him to help me remove all the sharp things from his bedroom, and any extra furniture, and I ask him to have a lock placed on the inside, the key to which he will keep somewhere I cannot find.
I don’t tell him that this makes me very nervous.
I don’t tell him that as I try to sleep tonight the walls are shrinking and the ceiling is falling and that I want to kick down the door or smash through the window and get the fuck out of this apartment and this town and even this goddamn country. I don’t tell him any of that, I just tie my wrists to the bedposts because I don’t want to strangle my poor husband as we sleep.
* * *
“What are we doing today?”
Niall unties my wrists so I can roll over to face him.
“Don’t you have to work?”
“What’s the point?” he asks. “Nothing ever changes.”
I am surprised to hear this from him but I suppose I shouldn’t be; the other side of passion is melancholy, after all. Instead of reminding him that there is always a point to educating people I kiss him. We make love in the morning light, but I am tense with the memory of feathers and my wrists are sore, and I don’t feel close to him, I feel in bed with a man who recognizes none of the monstrousness I keep hidden.
Afterward he asks again what we’re doing.
“Anything you want,” I say.
“Really? You don’t have anything planned?”
“I’m off today.”
“I know, but there’s nothing outside work you planned?”
I look at him, frowning.
He laughs. “I heard you on the phone yesterday, arranging to visit someone in Doolin.”
“Were you eavesdropping? You creep!”
“It’s a small apartment.”
I make a face.
“So do you want to drive or will I?” he asks.
“What if I want to go on my own?”
“Then go on your own.”
I consider him, looking for a trap. He seems genuine, so I shrug and feign disinterest. “Come if you want, but you’ll probably be bored.”
He heads for the shower. “Boredom’s for the boring.”
* * *
Most of the trip to Doolin is without music or talk, with only stretches of quiet that feel comfortable in one moment, awkward the next. The car is airless, so I have the windows down even though outside it’s freezing.
The closer we draw, the more unraveled I feel. I become convinced that this is wrong and I must turn back, that this door leads only to something harmful: it’s why Mam never led me here herself.
“So tell me about this accent of yours,” Niall says into the quiet, I think because he senses my unease.
“What about it?” I ask, keeping my eyes fixed on the stretch of sea to our right.
“I can’t work out what it is,” he admits. “Sometimes I think it might be English, other times you sound American. Then it’ll be pure Irish.”
“You married me without knowing where I come from.”
“Aye,” he says. Then, “Do you know it?”
“Where I come from?” I turn to him with a mouth open to answer, but stop. “I … Maybe not.”
“Is that what this is about?” Niall asks, nodding at the road unspooling itself before us.
I nod.
“All right, then. Grand.”
The small house sits on a ridge in the hillside and from its driveway we can see all the way down the sloping green to the sea. Rocky, uneven paddocks crisscross the expanse between, with a scattering of goats here and there.
Niall knocks because I’m unable to. The man who answers is a thousand years old and wind-bitten and hard-faced. He squints to make us out.
“Afternoon, sir,” Niall greets him. “We’re looking for John Torpey?”
“That’ll be me. Unless this is about the land and then old Jackey ain’t here.”
Niall smiles. “It’s not about the land.”
I clear my throat—Niall can’t do any more of this himself, for he knows no more about why I’m here. “I’m wondering if you might have ever known an Iris Stone.”
John stares at me, squinting until it seems his eyes are closed. “This a joke?”
“No.”
“You’ll be the wee daughter, then. I’d heard you were about in the world. Look at you now, all grown.” He sighs deeply and invites us in.
I am tense all the way through, unsure what to expect but feeling nearer the truth than ever.
The house is simple, with remnants of a woman’s touch here and there, a life left over from someone else. Old lace curtains, their edges dirty now. Once-cheerful porcelain figurines on a bookshelf, most chipped. A thick layer of dust covers every surface, and the windows are so dirty they let only streaks of light through. I feel instantly sad, gazing at the loneliness of the place. There’s a single photo on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. It’s a much younger John with a shock of incredibly orange hair, a dark-haired woman beside him, presumably his wife, Maire, and a little girl between, one with an inky swath of locks just like her mam’s. I don’t get much of a look at it before John is beckoning me to sit.
“What are you wanting, dear? If this is about the land after all then we’ve things to discuss.”
I frown, confused. “No, sir. I’m just here to ask after my mother. I was told by Margaret Bowen in Kilfenora that you might know her.”
He laughs then, the sound turning quickly to a wheezing cough. “Ah, now I see. Margaret’s losing her senses, can’t remember a thing about who belongs where.”
He goes into the kitchen and Niall and I listen to him shuffling around.
“Can I help you, John?” Niall asks, but John only grunts and returns with a floral tray, on top of which he’s placed a plate of digestive biscuits and two glasses of water.
“Thank you,” I say, taking a glass and noticing the smears of dirt on it. John must be close to blind.