The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley Page A

messed-up family. But mostly she thought of Eoin. What was the meaning behind the inscrutable way he smiled at her as he cleared ashtrays and wiped down tables? Around eight she heard Ronnie’s quiet footsteps, the static click of the television. An hour later, Nanny Ei’s lungs hacked into consciousness, a toilet flushed, and then there was the snap of a lighter and the sighing inhalation of the morning cigarette. The murmur of conversation between Ronnie and Nanny Ei, the sizzle of eggs in a pan. Then, on the other side of the wall, the awful creaking of Laura and Colm. If they were loud when they were drinking, they were almost as bad when they were hungover. Maggie could hear her mom loudest of all, the moaning, the panting. She yanked her pillow over ears.
You’d think that after last night, they wouldn’t be in the mood.
The headboard banged one final time, so hard that the pile of CDs on Maggie’s dresser trembled.
Why can’t Mom be discreet about anything?
She wondered.
Why is it that everything she feels, she has to make everybody else feel, too?
    The family ate breakfast quietly, heads bowed, while Nanny Ei forced the conversation along between gaping silences. Maggie could smell the booze coming off her mom’s skin, the stale cigarettes off her stepfather. They guzzled tea through cracked lips.
    â€œSausage, Mags?”
    Maggie took the plate, smiling pointedly at her grandmother to indicate that Nanny Ei was the only adult in the room who she did not want to disown. She bit into the meat, the rich, greasy taste filling her mouth and making her want to vomit. Johnny Cash still played on the record player, but in the gray morning light, with a family-wide hangover, the deep bass of his voice felt alien and threatening. Even so, it was better than the sound of rumbling throats and dry mouths chewing and swallowing.
    â€œWell. Should someone go and wake up Kevin?” Nanny Ei said his name carefully, bleaching out any hint of reprimand she might be directing at Colm as she cleared plates.
    â€œSure, wake him up,” he said, his mouth full of eggs. “No hard feelings here.”
    Laura smiled tightly and reached for his arm.
    Maggie bit into her toast. She wanted to savor this moment until the time when the secret no longer belonged to her and Kevin alone. She waited until Nanny Ei was nearly to the hallway before she made the announcement.
    â€œHe left.”
    Everyone looked at her.
    â€œWhat do you mean left?”
    â€œI mean, he’s gone.”
    Maggie glanced up from her plate at Nanny Ei, whose face had taken on the same perplexed, fearful expression it had at the Quayside, when she’d held a forgotten cigarette between her fingers and watched her son play “Fairytale of New York,” those pale fingers coaxing out of a guitar emotions that he himself would never express. It was a look that wondered how a mother could give a child life and still find herself, more and more as the years went by, locked out and estranged from that child’s inner life. Since they’d moved to Bray, Maggie had often caught her own mother looking at her in the same way.
    â€œHe left for the airport a couple hours ago,” she said, leveling her gaze at Colm. A dusting of dried blood clung to his knuckles. “He said he doesn’t want to stay here, under this roof, with you people.”
    Ronnie began pushing the eggs around on her plate with great concentration. Colm, looking supremely weary, pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose and sighed. Laura got up and threw a handful of dirty silverware into the sink.
    â€œThat’s just fucking great!”
    â€œLaura Lynch!” Nanny Ei said sharply. “For Christ’s sake, will you watch your language in front of your children?”
    â€œWell, I’m sorry, Mother, but here’s another family holiday he’s ruined. He just
had
to make me and Colm look like the bad guys. It’s like