"By evening I’ve emptied all the drawers and shelves downstairs before I lose the will to carry on. I make something to eat and sit down in her chair as night begins to fall. The chair is an island in a sea of detritus made of the discarded items of her life: old photographs of them as a couple, letters from him that she’d kept for some reason, newspaper cuttings, vinyl records, old programmes from plays and shows she’d seen in his company. I don’t want to think about him." |
As the days start to shorten, I find myself sitting in her worn armchair in the front room – the blinds raised, the light off – waiting for the fox and her mate to appear. I’m not disappointed. Under the orange glow of the streetlight a slender ochre shadow passes silently, to be followed seconds later by another. To be honest, I can’t distinguish male from female, but I sense she takes the lead because that’s what my life has taught me.
My mother died two weeks ago. She is buried now and all the business of life after her passing has been organised and dealt with, yet I’m still here. I would stay on, for a few days, I told my husband, to sort out certain matters. Frank didn’t argue. Perhaps he sensed I wanted to be on my own, so he took himself and the boys home, back to work and school and the dull attractions of routine. Every day he calls and every day we talk quietly about anything and everything except the one thing that needs to be spoken of. He doesn’t ask me when I’m coming home.
The front room, with its tall bay window, which in childhood was full of sky, now feels poky, small. Earlier I started to go through her things, sorting her clothes – one bag for the charity shop, one for the bin – but I had to stop, overcome by the scent of Estée Lauder which infused everything. I opened the bedroom window and shut the door in my wake. Downstairs a different clutter awaited me: old magazines and newspapers, tons of old books – many borrowed from the local library which I put in bags and returned in the afternoon. The woman at the desk looked at me dubiously. You’re returning these? she asked. I nodded. She began to shake her head as she extracted a battered hardback, but I spoke before she could push the bag back across the desk. They’re from my mother’s house – she passed away last week, I said. Tears filled my eyes, but I knew I wasn’t going to cry. I’d done all that. It was an adequate display of grief to convince the woman to accept them.
By evening I’ve emptied all the drawers and shelves downstairs before I lose the will to carry on. I make something to eat and sit down in her chair as night begins to fall. The chair is an island in a sea of detritus made of the discarded items of her life: old photographs of them as a couple, letters from him that she’d kept for some reason, newspaper cuttings, vinyl records, old programmes from plays and shows she’d seen in his company. I don’t want to think about him.
I sit and wait for my fox and she duly comes, trotting, poised, but with purpose. And he follows soon after. My hands itch – it might have been from the old books infested with dust mites or something. I tear at them until the skin cracks in places. I wash my hands in the kitchen and dry them on a clean tea towel I find in a cupboard under the sink. In another cupboard I find some antiseptic cream and notice a half empty bottle of port on a high shelf. I stand on a chair unsteadily and take it down. I fill a glass and sit back in her chair in the darkened front room watching the empty street.
I must have slept after a while because I dreamed the male fox was standing in the garden, agitated, uncertain what to do. He turned and turned about looking around for his mate, but she didn’t come. I knew she wasn’t coming. I got up and went to the window. The full moon washed the orange streetlight yellow. He turned to me then and barked, his body buckled by the awful sound wrenched from his insides. I felt it in my chest, in the empty cavern where my heart used to beat.
I woke up sweating and sore, limbs numb and mouth dry. Outside nothing stirred. I listened, as if I could discern the distant screaming of the female in reply, but there was no sound. I picked up a sheaf of papers off the floor and leafed through them until I came across a photograph. I remember the day it was taken. I was ten. It was the last trip that we took as a family before he left. He isn’t in the photo of course, but I can see him clearly now behind the camera. His long fingers, the dark hairs on the back of his hands, the old Aran sweater that he always wore, the dark curly hair that fell across his pale face hiding one green eye. I loved him, but when he left us I learned to hate him just as much as she did.
I’m startled by the phone bursting into life. Who is calling at this ungodly hour? But I realise that it is morning now, I must have dozed again because the sky outside is bright grey and there are people on the street, going to work or school perhaps. I rise slowly, feeling my age, imagining my mother living alone all these years, standing awkwardly to answer a call in the same way.
Before I pick up the receiver I know it is Frank. He says my name and waits. I know his every thought. I feel the tremor in his breath, feel his need inside me. I know what he is going to say. Come home, he says. Please come home. We need you, we miss you, we love you. The animal in me is startled all the same. I bristle, breathe. Okay, I say, I’m ready now.
My mother died two weeks ago. She is buried now and all the business of life after her passing has been organised and dealt with, yet I’m still here. I would stay on, for a few days, I told my husband, to sort out certain matters. Frank didn’t argue. Perhaps he sensed I wanted to be on my own, so he took himself and the boys home, back to work and school and the dull attractions of routine. Every day he calls and every day we talk quietly about anything and everything except the one thing that needs to be spoken of. He doesn’t ask me when I’m coming home.
The front room, with its tall bay window, which in childhood was full of sky, now feels poky, small. Earlier I started to go through her things, sorting her clothes – one bag for the charity shop, one for the bin – but I had to stop, overcome by the scent of Estée Lauder which infused everything. I opened the bedroom window and shut the door in my wake. Downstairs a different clutter awaited me: old magazines and newspapers, tons of old books – many borrowed from the local library which I put in bags and returned in the afternoon. The woman at the desk looked at me dubiously. You’re returning these? she asked. I nodded. She began to shake her head as she extracted a battered hardback, but I spoke before she could push the bag back across the desk. They’re from my mother’s house – she passed away last week, I said. Tears filled my eyes, but I knew I wasn’t going to cry. I’d done all that. It was an adequate display of grief to convince the woman to accept them.
By evening I’ve emptied all the drawers and shelves downstairs before I lose the will to carry on. I make something to eat and sit down in her chair as night begins to fall. The chair is an island in a sea of detritus made of the discarded items of her life: old photographs of them as a couple, letters from him that she’d kept for some reason, newspaper cuttings, vinyl records, old programmes from plays and shows she’d seen in his company. I don’t want to think about him.
I sit and wait for my fox and she duly comes, trotting, poised, but with purpose. And he follows soon after. My hands itch – it might have been from the old books infested with dust mites or something. I tear at them until the skin cracks in places. I wash my hands in the kitchen and dry them on a clean tea towel I find in a cupboard under the sink. In another cupboard I find some antiseptic cream and notice a half empty bottle of port on a high shelf. I stand on a chair unsteadily and take it down. I fill a glass and sit back in her chair in the darkened front room watching the empty street.
I must have slept after a while because I dreamed the male fox was standing in the garden, agitated, uncertain what to do. He turned and turned about looking around for his mate, but she didn’t come. I knew she wasn’t coming. I got up and went to the window. The full moon washed the orange streetlight yellow. He turned to me then and barked, his body buckled by the awful sound wrenched from his insides. I felt it in my chest, in the empty cavern where my heart used to beat.
I woke up sweating and sore, limbs numb and mouth dry. Outside nothing stirred. I listened, as if I could discern the distant screaming of the female in reply, but there was no sound. I picked up a sheaf of papers off the floor and leafed through them until I came across a photograph. I remember the day it was taken. I was ten. It was the last trip that we took as a family before he left. He isn’t in the photo of course, but I can see him clearly now behind the camera. His long fingers, the dark hairs on the back of his hands, the old Aran sweater that he always wore, the dark curly hair that fell across his pale face hiding one green eye. I loved him, but when he left us I learned to hate him just as much as she did.
I’m startled by the phone bursting into life. Who is calling at this ungodly hour? But I realise that it is morning now, I must have dozed again because the sky outside is bright grey and there are people on the street, going to work or school perhaps. I rise slowly, feeling my age, imagining my mother living alone all these years, standing awkwardly to answer a call in the same way.
Before I pick up the receiver I know it is Frank. He says my name and waits. I know his every thought. I feel the tremor in his breath, feel his need inside me. I know what he is going to say. Come home, he says. Please come home. We need you, we miss you, we love you. The animal in me is startled all the same. I bristle, breathe. Okay, I say, I’m ready now.
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Brian Kirk has published two poetry collections with Salmon Poetry, After The Fall (2017) and Hare’s Breath (2023) and a short fiction chapbook It’s Not Me It’s You (Southword Editions, 2019). His novel Riverrun was chosen as a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022.
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