A Greyhound of a Girl Read online

  “Okay,” said Mary.

  ary didn’t like the hospital. She hated the smell of the place, and the noise, and the people in the corridors crying and holding each other, and the sick people in their dressing gowns at the front door, smoking and coughing. The place frightened her. Even the name, Sacred Heart Hospital, scared her a bit. The Sacred Heart, people called it. She’s in the Sacred Heart. Mary imagined a huge bloody heart with a squelchy door that you had to squeeze through, and blood dripping from the ceiling. She knew it was silly. The hospital was actually a gray building that didn’t drip blood at all, although water leaked in one of the corridors. But there were all sorts of warnings about swine flu, or H1N1, and winter vomiting and coughing and sanitizers and washing your hands and paying your bills, all over the walls and doors. She hated it, not because she was afraid she’d catch the swine flu or that she’d start vomiting on the first day of winter. It was the atmosphere of the place—all the sickness and warnings. Mary loved her granny, but she didn’t like having to go to see her—and that made her feel bad too.

  Her granny was very sick, but also very cheerful. Her smile got bigger and wider when she saw Mary.

  “Get up here beside me,” she said.

  “Okay,” said Mary.

  She took off her boots and climbed up on the bed and lay down beside her granny.

  “Oh, my, Granny,” said Mary. “What big teeth you have.”

  It was a Mary-Granny joke that went back to the time when Granny had first read her Little Red Riding Hood, when Mary was only five. (Although Mary’s granny’s teeth actually were quite big.)

  Her granny smiled again.

  “All the better to eat you with, my dear,” she said.

  “Start at my feet,” said Mary.

  “They’re too far away,” said her granny. “You’re growing too fast.”

  “I know,” said Mary. “I’m really good at growing.”

  “She’ll be as tall as you, Mum!” said Scarlett.

  “Like all of us,” said Mary’s granny—Scarlett’s mother. “We’re all tall girls.”

  “How are you feeling today?” Mary asked.

  “Ah, sure,” said her granny. “I’ve felt better. My own growing days are over. But, sure, the bed is grand and comfy. What did you do in school today?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” said her granny. “That was my favorite subject. I was always good at doing nothing. Top of the class, every blessed time.”

  Then she fell asleep. And that was frightening too, how quickly, how easily her granny fell—dropped—into sleep. It was always so sudden, as if she’d been unplugged. No yawn or smile, just the sudden drop.

  Mary kissed her granny’s forehead. Then she climbed back down off the bed. Scarlett kissed the forehead too. And Granny’s eyes opened.

  “I’m frightened, Scarlett,” she said, very quietly.

  “It’s fine,” said Scarlett.

  “I’m afraid I’ll never open my eyes again.”

  “I know,” said Scarlett. “But you opened them this time.”

  “That’s true,” said her mother. “I’m not dead yet.”

  “No,” said Scarlett, and she smiled. “You’re not.”

  “Here goes,” said Granny.

  And she shut her eyes.

  She opened them.

  “Just checking.”

  She closed them.

  “Go on,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m too lively to die today.”

  Her eyes stayed closed. They watched her breathing, a little smile on her old face. She was asleep.

  They left.

  “What’s actually wrong with Granny?” Mary asked, on the way home in the car.

  “Nothing really,” said her mother. “She’s very old, you know. No one lives forever.”

  “Why not?”

  Her mother looked at Mary.

  “We just don’t,” she said. “We’re mortal. You know what that means.”

  “Yeah,” said Mary. “But it just seems mean.”

  “You’re right,” said her mother. “It does seem mean. Especially when it’s someone you love.”

  They cried. And they laughed a bit too, because they were crying.

  “Oh, dear,” said her mother. “I can hardly see the road ahead of me.”

  “What happened to the !!!s?” said Mary.

  “What?”

  “The !!!s,” said Mary.

  “Oh,” said her mother. “They seem to fall out of me whenever I go into that hospital.”

  When they got back to the house, Mary’s brothers had come home from their school.

  “Hi, boys!”

  “They’re back,” said Mary.

  “The boys?!”

  “No, the !!!s.”

  “Oh, good!”

  The boys were back, but Mary didn’t care. Her brothers were older than her. At fourteen and sixteen, they were boring and weird. They used to be Dominic and Kevin but these days they preferred to be called Dommo and Killer. They had deep voices that made all the cups in the kitchen shake, and their bedroom and most of the house smelled of a deodorant called Lynx that made Mary’s eyes water whenever she strolled through a cloud of it. They laughed a lot and never explained why.

  It was an hour later, and Mary was having her dinner with Dommo and Killer, and her mother and father, whose name was Paddy.

  The boys were laughing, and nudging each other.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Paddy.

  “Nothing,” said Dommo.

  “Is there any ice cream?” asked Killer.

  “It’s a weekday!” said Scarlett. “What’s so funny?!”

  “Nothing.”

  “Laughing at nothing,” said Paddy. “I’d love to see the state of yis when you’re laughing at something.”

  This time they didn’t laugh.

  “I give up,” said Paddy.

  They laughed.

  “How was your mother?” Paddy asked Scarlett.

  “Fine,” she said. “Not fine. The usual. God, it feels cruel just talking about it.”

  The boys weren’t laughing. They loved their grandmother. She’d always called them her mad fellas, for as long as they could remember. She’d listened to everything they’d ever said, every whinge and complaint, and always answered the same way: “You’re dead right.” And she’d always greeted them the same way, from the time Dommo was three and Killer was five: “Any girlfriends yet, lads?” They’d only been to the hospital once and they’d spent all the time there showing their granny how to use their iPods. They had to show her how to put in the earphones. She tried to sit up straight. She held an iPod in both her hands.

  “Give me a listen to these lads here,” she shouted—she read the name. “Kings of Leon.”

  She’d listened to about thirty seconds of one song.

  “Not too bad,” she shouted. “But they’re not a patch on Elvis.”

  “D’you like Elvis, Granny?” said Dommo.

  “What?!”

  “D’you like Elvis?”

  “Love him!” she shouted.

  “Did you ever see him?” Killer asked.

  “No, I did not,” she shouted. “He never came to our parish. But, sure, boys, I’ll be meeting him soon enough.”

  They’d laughed, because she’d wanted them to, even though she’d been talking about her own death. But it was nothing new, really. She’d always made them laugh. Just like Mary, they hated the hospital, and they hated the fact that they almost never went. They refused to go, because they hated it so much. They felt like cowards, although they’d never spoken about it. They missed their granny; they felt sorry for their mother, and for themselves. But they didn’t know what to say, and they were too old for hugging. They were too old for everything.

  But they stayed downstairs after dinner with Mary and their parents, and they all watched Ireland’s Got Talent.

  “Well,” said Paddy during the ads. “All I can say is, Ireland’s got absolut
ely no talent.”

  The boys didn’t laugh.

  “I think it’s good!” said Scarlett.

  The boys laughed.

  “The guy with the singing toothbrush was quite funny!”

  The boys laughed.

  “But did you see his teeth?” said Paddy. “They were rotten.”

  The boys didn’t laugh.

  “Why isn’t that funny?” Paddy asked.

  The boys shrugged.

  “Just,” said Killer.

  “Just what?”

  Killer shrugged.

  They watched the rest of the show, three more acts: a woman who juggled three knives and left the stage early, whimpering and clutching her shoulder; a boy who spun on his head until he got sick, and a nun with a baseball cap who sang “Don’t Stop Believin’,” in Irish.

  When it was over, Paddy stretched his legs and arms. He yawned.

  “Time for bed,” he said. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s too early for bed,” said Killer.

  “It’s never too early for bed,” said their father.

  “That’s just sad,” said Dommo.

  “I agree,” said Paddy.

  He stood up and handed the remote control to Dommo.

  “Make sure you don’t watch anything educational,” he said.

  They didn’t laugh.

  “It was so nice you watched telly with us, boys!” said Scarlett.

  “Okay.”

  “Telly off in half an hour, okay?”

  “An hour.”

  “Three-quarters.”

  “Good night!” said Scarlett. “I love you both!”

  Dommo muttered something that sounded a little like “Uv U2,” but Killer said nothing.

  Mary didn’t say good night to her brothers. She didn’t know how. She didn’t know them. She used to, but not anymore. They’d changed into aliens. It worried her sometimes—a lot of the time. She worried that she’d turn into one of them. Dommo was only two years older than Mary, so she only had two years of normal life left before she’d start grunting and laughing at nothing. Unless the weird stuff only happened to boys. She knew all about her own body and what was going to be happening soon, but that didn’t worry her—at all. It excited her, all the changes just around the corner. It wasn’t the changes to her body that scared or worried Mary. It was the stranger ones, the ones that had turned her brothers into strangers. She didn’t want to be like them. She thought they were probably lonely.

  But, then, so was she.

  She changed into the clothes she liked for bed, a hoodie and pajama bottoms. Then she went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She had one of her baby teeth left, the only person in her class with any. It was at the back and it was loose, so she nudged it a bit. The dentist had told her to do this every morning and every night.

  “Come out or I’ll kill you,” she said to her mouth in the mirror.

  Threatening the tooth was her own idea, not the dentist’s. She gave up and went to her parents’ bedroom. She looked in at them sitting up, reading.

  “Did you brush your teeth?” she asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Yeah.”

  This was an old routine, repeated every night—every night. Mary would ask the stupid adult questions and her parents would give the child’s answers. They’d been doing it for years, ever since Mary had read her father a bedtime story one night and they’d laughed so much, because it had seemed so silly, that they’d done it again the night after, and the one after that. Until even when her parents weren’t going to bed they pretended they were, for the fun.

  “Did both of you brush them?”

  “Yes!”

  “Smell my breath if you want to.”

  “No, thank you,” said Mary. “Night-night.”

  She kissed them both on the forehead.

  “Lights out in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Aw!”

  “Okay.”

  As she walked to the door and went out to the landing, she suddenly knew something: soon she’d stop doing what she’d just done. She just knew, one day she wouldn’t want to do it anymore. And that made her sad.

  She got into bed and felt all alone. She was tempted to go back to her parents, but she stayed where she was. She read a bit of her book, Twilight. But she was tired, and not even the story—it was the best book she’d ever read and she’d seen the film seven times—could keep her awake. She turned off the bedside light and lay back and almost immediately she was asleep.

  Mary never closed her curtains. She liked the different lights that came through the window at night, especially the shadows made by the swaying leaves and the headlights of cars that raced across her ceiling. She often fell asleep counting cars. So she kept the curtains open. And tonight this was interesting because the woman Mary had met earlier was sitting outside, on the windowsill.

  hat’s your name?” Mary asked.

  “Tansey,” said the woman.

  It was the day after the first time they’d met, and the woman was suddenly there again, walking beside Mary, in the same dress and the same big boots. The boots were mucky, but the muck looked clean and shining, as if the boots had been painted to look mucky. There she was, and Mary suddenly remembered that they’d met the day before. She’d completely forgotten.

  “Tansey?” said Mary. “Is it, like, short for something?”

  “It is,” said the woman.

  “Well,” said Mary. “What is it short for?”

  “Anastasia.”

  Mary stopped walking and looked at the woman—Anastasia. The name seemed old-fashioned too, like everything else about her. She was smiling at Mary. It was cold, but she wasn’t wearing a jacket or even a jumper.

  “I’ve heard that name before,” said Mary.

  “Sure, it’s only a name,” said the woman.

  “I suppose,” said Mary. “Have you moved into Ava’s house?”

  “I have not,” said the woman. “And who’s Ava when she’s at home?”

  “My friend,” said Mary. “And she’s not at home. She moved.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It’s stupid,” said Mary.

  “You’re dead right, girl.”

  “Which house do you live in, then?”

  “I don’t,” said Tansey.

  “What?”

  “I don’t live in any house at all.”

  Mary was nervous—again. Was the woman mad? Or even dangerous? But Mary looked at the woman’s face and she became calm. There was nothing mad or dangerous there. She was smiling, and there was a tiny wrinkle beside one of her eyes that looked a bit like an extra smile.

  “I know,” said Mary. “You live in one of the apartments.”

  She pointed at the gray-and-red block at the end of the street.

  “No, I do not,” said Tansey. “What’s an apartment?”

  She put her hands on top of a garden wall and lifted herself onto it. She did it quickly and easily; she didn’t groan or gasp. She sat there like it was a perfectly natural thing for an adult to do.

  “Up you get now,” she said to Mary, and she patted the place beside her.

  Mary took her schoolbag off her back and jumped at the wall. She was a good climber, although she didn’t really do that kind of thing anymore. It was ages since she’d climbed a wall. She couldn’t remember the last time.

  She sat beside the woman.

  “Which do you prefer?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Tansey or Anastasia?”

  “Oh,” said the woman, “I was always Tansey. No one ever called me Anastasia.”

  She spoke like Mary’s granny sometimes did, as if she was remembering something, even seeing something, that had happened long ago or far away.

  “It took too long, I suppose,” said Tansey. “Sure, I’d be gone before they got to the end of that name. An-a-stay-zeeee-aaaahh. I’d be halfway to Gorey on my bike.”

  She sm
iled at Mary.

  “Isn’t this nice now.”

  “Yeah,” said Mary.

  “Will you be seeing your granny today, will you?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah,” said Mary. “I think.”

  “Did you give her that message yesterday?” said the woman.

  “What message?”

  “I told you to tell her that it’ll all be grand.”

  “I forgot,” said Mary.

  The woman looked annoyed, for half a second. It was strange: her face went back to normal, but the annoyed expression was right behind it, as if two masks, happy and sad, had been brought together to make one mask. Then the annoyed—the sad—look was gone and she was smiling again. The wrinkle at her eye deepened and became part of her smile.

  “You’ll remember it today,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Mary.

  “Tell her Tansey told you.”

  “Does Granny know you?”

  “She does,” said the woman. “She did. Well, I suppose you have homework, do you?”

  “Yeah,” sighed Mary.

  “You poor suffering creature,” said the woman. “You’d better go inside and do it, so.”

  “Okay,” said Mary.

  “The same time tomorrow?” said the woman. “Will you be strolling past at all?”

  Mary laughed. She loved the way the woman talked. She’d forgotten that she’d been nervous only a minute before. And she’d forgotten that she still didn’t know where the woman lived.

  She jumped off the wall and picked up her bag.

  “I will be strolling past at all,” she said as she walked away, trying to sound like the woman.

  She looked back, to see if the woman had noticed, or cared. But the woman wasn’t there.

  Or, she was.

  It was like a television screen in sunlight. The woman’s dress, all of the woman, had faded, become colorless. Then, quickly, as if a curtain had been closed to block the light or the sun had gone behind a cloud, the woman and her colors were sharp again and definitely there.

  Mary looked up: the sun had gone behind a cloud.

  “Bye, so,” said Mary.

  “Bye-bye,” said the woman.

  Mary walked away and, again, she looked back.

  “I’m still here,” said the woman. “The long stuff today, is it? You’re having for your dinner.”