Foster

by Claire Keegan

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

But this is a different type of house. Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare.

He waits for her to pick it up, to hand it to him. She waits for him to do it. Neither one of them will budge.

Why did he leave without so much as a good-bye, without ever mentioning that he would come back for me?

The bath fills and the white room changes so that a type of blindness comes over us; we can see everything and yet we can’t see.

Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

‘She says you can keep me for as long as you like.’

‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’

As soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.

Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.

Down here, it is cool and still and when I breathe, I hear the sound my breath makes over the still mouth of the well – so I breathe harder for a while to feel these sounds I make, coming back. The woman stands behind, not seeming to mind each breath coming back, as though they are hers.

This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home.

I wonder how she manages when I am not here, and conclude that she must ordinarily fetch two buckets. I try to remember another time when I felt like this and am sad because I can’t remember a time, and happy, too, because I cannot.

Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.

‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’

she wants me to get things right, to teach me.

She is like the man, doing it all without rushing but neither one of them ever really stops.

Kinsella laughs. ‘She could be right there. Still and all, there’s no two men the same. And it’d be a swift man that would catch you, long legs. We’ll try you again tomorrow and see if we can’t improve your time.’ ‘I’ve to go faster?’ ‘Oh aye,’ he says. ‘By the time this summer ends you’ll be like a reindeer. There’ll not be a man in the parish will catch you without a long-handled net and a racing bike.’

‘But you said there were no secrets here.’ ‘This is different, more like a secret recipe.’

I don’t really care, as some part of me is pleased to please her.

I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end:

‘Come on in,’ Kinsella said. ‘Just cos I’ve none of my own doesn’t mean I’d see the rain falling in on anyone else’s.’

I freeze in the chair, waiting for something much worse to happen, but Kinsella does nothing more;

‘God forgive me but if I ever run into that woman again it will be too soon,’

‘It’s only missing her I’ll be when she is gone.’

Walking down the road, there’s a taste of something darker in the air, of something that might fall and blow and change things.

‘Good girl. Don’t ever get a taste for it. If you start, you might never stop and then you’d wind up like the rest of us.’

I don’t know whether to sit or stand, to listen or leave,

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be. He takes shorter steps so we can walk in time. I think about the woman in the cottage, of how she walked and spoke, and conclude that there are huge differences between people.

‘Don’t be afraid!’

It’s too good, she is. She wants to find the good in others, and sometimes her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.’

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.

‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’

‘See, there’s three lights now where there was only two before.’ I look out across the sea. There, the two lights are blinking as before, but with another, steady light, shining in between. ‘Can you see it?’ he says. ‘I can,’ I say. ‘It’s there.’ And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.

I stand there and stare at the fire, trying not to cry. It is a long time since I have done this and, in doing it, remember that it is the worst thing you can possibly do.

We fold what clothes I have and place them inside, along with the books we bought at Webb’s in Gorey: Heidi, What Katy Did Next, The Snow Queen. At first, I struggled with some of the bigger words, but Kinsella kept his fingernail under each, patiently, until I guessed it or half-guessed it and then I did this by myself until I no longer needed to guess, and read on. It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.

‘Nothing happened.’ This is my mother I am speaking to but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.

There is only one thing I care about now, and my feet are carrying me there.