Terrace

Charismata

Chapter 92: Terrace

Deirdre Mallon had been a deacon long enough to know when people were coming to her house for God and when they were coming for a version of God that kept better records.

The woman from the diocesan office was due at half ten. That alone would have been enough to sour an ordinary morning.

But this was not an ordinary morning. Nessa had slept two hours in four nights. Aoife was moving through the terrace with the brisk false competence of the eldest daughter who had decided grief would behave if arranged into lists. And Finn, the lodger, had started apologizing every time he opened a cupboard as though the plates might still belong to Colm.

The house was becoming too careful.

Deirdre stood at the stove in her old clerical vest and cardigan, stirring porridge for four and refusing to let the terrace become visitable.

Aoife came down already carrying the good mugs.

"No."

Aoife stopped.

"What."

"Not the blue set."

"Why not."

"Because if a diocesan woman arrives and I have laid out the blue set, she will think we are asking to be understood."

Aoife stared at her mother.

"That is one of the least encouraging things you have ever said before breakfast."

"Then it is a strong morning."

From the upstairs room, Nessa called:

"I can hear you both trying to be brave again."

Aoife closed her eyes.

"See."

Deirdre did not flinch. No one in the house had flinched properly for days. Everything had been turned toward competent holding. Sleep delayed. Tea made. Phone checked. The dead man's books still on the shelf because moving them felt like betrayal and keeping them felt like command.

Colm had been gone eleven months. Not long enough for the parish to stop saying how are the girls with that caution reserved for explosive devices and Christmas. Long enough for grief to start learning the house's routes better than the living did.

The first call to Hull had not even been Deirdre's idea. It had come through Father Byrne after Nessa finished a prayer Deirdre had only just thought and then burst into tears because she knew, as the young always did, that being the one through whom a room started sounding strange was the fastest way to become everybody's problem.

Hull had not sent a savior. Thank God.

They had sent Cardiff. Then Croydon by way of one woman named Tasha who seemed to believe every domestic emergency in Britain could be improved by refusing to let the prettiest version of it survive.

Deirdre had liked her at once.

"Mum," Aoife said, "you are stirring dry oats."

Deirdre looked down. She was.

"Useful."

"No," Aoife said. "Bad."

The phone rang. Not the house line. Deirdre's mobile.

Tasha.

"Morning, Belfast."

"Good morning, Croydon."

"You cleaned."

Deirdre looked at the hall. At the shoes lined too neatly by the radiator. At the table already lacking one chair because Aoife had tucked it aside to make the room look less crowded.

"Very little."

"Liar."

Deirdre smiled despite herself.

"What is your interest in my housekeeping."

"Professional. The visitor can't meet the house if you hide the evidence."

"That sounds perverse."

"No. That sounds local."

Aoife took the phone from her.

"She's made porridge in a clerical collar."

"Good. Has Nessa eaten."

"Not yet."

"Then stop practicing humility and get bread into the child."

Deirdre took the phone back.

"She is nineteen."

"Then get bread into the woman and stop trying to win me on semantics."

At 09:42 Nessa came down in her father's old jumper and looked instantly younger than her nineteen years.

"I don't want a church person in the house."

"You live in a church person," Deirdre said.

"You know what I mean."

She did.

The diocesan woman was not coming as priest, even if she had one tucked under the coat somewhere. She was coming as witness. As review without naming itself review too quickly. As the Church's latest attempt to see without seizing.

Deirdre did not yet trust it.

"You may leave if you need air," she said.

"That'll look suspicious."

"This house is past suspicious. We are at Irish and tired."

Finn laughed from the sink. The room needed laughter more than doctrine.

At 10:31 Canon Eimear Donnelly arrived with no folder visible and rain still on her shoulders.

She stood in the doorway, took in the narrow hall, the porridge, the cardigan, Nessa barefoot on the stairs, Aoife furious with the toast, and said:

"Right. So we're in the actual house, then."

Deirdre liked her on sight and distrusted herself for it.

"Depends who is asking."

"Eimear. Sent from the diocesan office because someone there has started using the phrase domestic containment and I would like to interrupt that before it breeds."

Aoife handed her the bad mug, not the blue one. Better.

"Tea first," Aoife said.

"Bless you," Eimear answered.

No one sat in the front room. There was one. Narrow. Piano no one currently loved. Good curtains. Colm's study Bible on the side table like a threat.

They all stayed in the kitchen. By the window. By the sink. At the scrubbed table with the mark where Nessa had burned it at fifteen and lied for two weeks.

Eimear did not ask for symptoms. She asked who had slept. Who was hearing whom. Who had become indispensable. Who was still carrying parish grief for people kind enough to keep leaving it on the doorstep in casserole dishes.

That last question got Deirdre.

Not dramatically. Only enough for the spoon in her hand to strike the bowl once.

"There it is," Tasha said down the speaker from Croydon. "That's the one."

Eimear turned her head toward the phone.

"You must be Tasha."

"Frequently."

"Stay."

"Gladly."

So the kitchen held Belfast, Croydon, and the diocesan woman all at once with Cardiff waiting by arrangement if the morning decided to become elaborate.

Nessa sat at the table with both hands around the mug.

"I keep knowing the next sentence."

Eimear nodded.

"And are the next sentences mostly prayer."

"No."

"What then."

Nessa looked at her mother. Then at the rain on the window.

"Mostly what everybody is trying not to say because Dad died and the house has become very polite."

Silence.

Aoife started crying first. Which surprised everyone, herself most of all.

"I am so tired of being grateful in this house," she said.

Deirdre closed her eyes.

Eimear did not pounce.

"Then let's not be grateful for half an hour," she said.

Finn said into the sink,

"That sounds illegal."

"Many mercies do."

Deirdre sat at last. Really sat. Not the standing lean she had been calling rest for months.

"I have been trying to keep the parish from worrying," she said.

Tasha made a sound like a knife going through string.

"There she is."

Eimear said nothing. Only waited.

"Colm died," Deirdre said. "Then everybody brought pies and phrases and went home. Then the girls started waking with the house. Then I started listening for them before they moved. Then Nessa started hearing the room before it spoke. And somewhere in there I began treating my own kitchen like a situation requiring professional tone."

Eimear took a sip of tea.

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes. That will do it."

Nessa laughed helplessly into the mug.

Aoife wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

"This feels rude."

"Good," Tasha said from the phone. "Rude is where houses get honest."

By noon the visitor had written almost nothing. One page. Three names. One question: who in this house is allowed not to carry the dead.

That question stayed on the table longer than the porridge did.

When Eimear stood to leave, Deirdre walked her to the door.

"What do I tell the office."

Eimear put on her coat slowly.

"Tell them this is a bereaved house under shared waking, not a charismatic irregularity requiring clever nouns."

"Will they like that."

"No."

"Good."

Eimear smiled.

"And Deirdre."

"Yes."

"Next time they visit, don't hide the blue mugs. It makes you look frightened."

Deirdre stared.

"I was trying not to perform."

"You were performing not-performing. Different vice."

After she left, Aoife found the blue mugs in the sideboard and set them back on the shelf above the sink where they belonged.

Nessa wrote Belfast's second rule on the back of the circular while the kettle boiled again:

FEED THEM BEFORE THEY NAME YOU.

Deirdre pinned it to the wall by the phone so the terrace could hear itself there the next time it forgot sleep and started trying to be admirable.