Thomas Murphy Read Free Page B

business. Máire and I prolong our conversation with Dr. Spector, each saying things we do not mean. The doctor is cute in her white coat, with a face full of character, a noble face, also inquisitive, like Joanne Woodward in They Might Be Giants . I give her a wink. She smirks in mock disgust, and hands me a manila folder. This is a take-home test, Mr. Murphy. I tell her take-home tests are my favorite kind, ’cause you can look up the answers. She says that if I look up the answers for this one, I’ll wind up behind the eight ball.
    â€œI’ve read your poems,” she says.
    â€œSo you’re the one”—old writer’s joke.
    â€œThey’re difficult,” she says. “Like you.” I smile. She doesn’t.
    â€œBut worth the effort?” I am coy as a girl.
    â€œWe’ll see,” she says.
    Dr. Spector bids me, Be well, which I take as a command. I hug my fretful Máire good-bye, and head for home, where I go straight for the fridge and toss out the eggs.
    CRAZY, OONA, but after one full year I still shout your name when I enter the house. Crazier, I poke my head into every room, including the bathrooms, just in case. Then, failing to rouse you, I settle in the kitchen. I used to lament that we had so many rooms, especially after Máire grew up and out, and there were just the two of us to rattle around the joint. Now, I’m glad it’s as big as it is, so I can postpone my disappointment when I cannot find you. I don’t mind being alone, Oona. I mind being alone without you.
    So, here’s what I do—not always, but once in a while. I create a conversation with the furniture we acquired together, all of it, every piece. And the prints and paintings on the walls, too, including the Raphael Soyer sketch of the old man, who suddenly looks like me, and theeighteenth-century map of Ireland I spilled coffee on, and the English tavern table we got for a song at that auction in the Bowery. Every chair, lamp, stool. Every picture—that photo of wrinkled old Auden you bought me for my thirty-sixth birthday, half a life ago, predicting that I would have even more wrinkles than Auden when I reached his age. As I go through the lot, I ask you if you remember when exactly it was that we acquired this object and that.
    Naturally, you get everything right, each precise detail of time, day, and weather, and who was wearing what. And as you tell me about the pencil drawing of Synge that I found for us on Merrion Square in Dublin, that’s sitting on my writing desk now, or the fake Bokhara rug we were suckered into buying from that shyster on Mott Street, I too start to recall all the relevant information. I relive us. The entire process takes about two hours—Jesus, Oona, we have so much stuff. And when I’m finally done, having covered every item, I’m usually pretty tired, so I head for bed. Our bed, darlin’ girl, I save for last.
    ON THE OTHER SIDE of the wall, in his bed, Flynn lies with his death throes. That’s how it is on the island. You die in the house you were born in, and you live there in between. Flynn is eighty-eight, his weight down to ninety-six pounds. His eyes are tide pools, his feet like crabs flinching on the beach. There’s no voice left in him. Caitand I play checkers in the kitchen. We are ten. Through the wall, we hear Flynn thrashing about in his sheets, like rustling paper, but do not look up from the checkerboard between us. Flynn’s daughter, Cait’s ma, sweeps the floor. She does not look up either. She knows from birth how it is.
    We have forgotten how to be sad here. I think that may be the worst of it—to forget how to be sad, and how important was a life. Cait studies the checkers, then double jumps me, letting her arms fall at her side. She frowns in victory.
    THIS PLACE. This time. This time of life. If autumn is fall, winter is fallen. Stone harvest. This wine. This judgment, and the