*Content Warnings: Depiction of Death or Terminal Illness*

Listening for Liam

by: Don Reilly

Patrick Maguire walks under the gray sandstone arch into the Milltown Cemetery, toward the stone cottage with the slate roof, the one where the gravediggers store their picks and shovels. He keeps his rusty beach chair under the back window which is open to the soft July mist. One of the gravediggers is waiting inside by the electric kettle. He’s about the age Patrick’s son would have been. The gravedigger calls out, “How about you, Mr. Maguire? Will you take some tea?”

“No thanks, mate,” Patrick says, as he does every day.

He follows the walker’s path into the cemetery. Up ahead are the gravesites. Huge Celtic crosses rise from the ground like leafless trees. The sky is overcast. Soft mist has turned into a gentle rain and the path is slick. Buried under the walkaway is a six-foot cement wall separating this Catholic cemetery from the Protestant one across the road. Patrick has always found this odd. Does a wall stop souls?

Patrick enters the large plot where Irish Republican Army soldiers are buried. Light brown gravel in the pathway crunches under his feet. Low black gravestones mark the sites of the men and women who gave their lives to free Ireland from British rule. Some of them fought during the Easter Rising of 1916, some during the war of independence in 1921 or the civil war that followed. Many died during the Troubles. The gravesites are well-maintained. Unfaded Irish flags stand at attention amid green, white, and orange carnation bouquets. Patrick walks to the section where the ten men who died during the 1981 hunger strike are buried. Their bodies were the last weapons they had to protest the way the British government treated them and all Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. Bobby Sands is there. Joe McDonnell. And Patrick’s son: Liam Maguire.

“Hello,” Patrick says as he opens his beach chair and twists it into the gravel. He rocks it until it’s secure. From his anorak pocket, he pulls an old cotton shirt which belonged to his son. He dusts the face of the stone making the gold letters shine. They say, “Liam Maguire, 1951-1981. He died hungering for the freedom of Northern Ireland.” These words weren’t his idea, but that’s another story.

Patrick sits in his chair and scolds himself for not fixing the frayed nylon ribbon. Why can’t I remember, he asks himself? He shares the latest news with his son. Alanna, Liam’s daughter, will be attending Boston College in September where she’ll major in Irish studies. “I don’t know why she’d want to immerse herself in Irish history. Hasn’t she had enough of it?” Liam’s voice comes to him now: Some of us can’t escape the nightmare of history. Patrick laughs. Liam was always one for the literary allusions. Patrick shares some of the news of the day: the IRA and UDA, the paramilitary groups that have been at war, are talking about a cease fire again. It won’t hold, Liam says.

Patrick nods and says, “Right. But one can hope.”

He pauses and talks about the weather. After a while, Liam’s silence tells him that he has gone on too long. He’s trying to decide if he should mention that Liam’s son is back in treatment. Instead, he gets up and tiptoes around the other gravesites, picking up dried leaves, snapping off the heads of dead carnations. Rearranging trinkets: a toy car here, a carved wooden cat there, a rusted crucifix. Sometimes, as he walks between the markers, he holds out his arms like a tightrope walker. “Why can’t these be farther apart?” he says aloud. Behind one of them, along the base of the limestone border wall of the plot, are several crumpled white tissues. He shakes his head and sighs. He tries to move his large body close enough to grab them. His knees creak as he kneels. The gravel is uneven beneath his feet, and his body teeters. He grabs the tissues with his fingertips, but as he rises, he loses his balance and falls. His hip crashes into the corner of the border wall. Pain cleaves though his body like a dull ax. An image of his daughter-in-law, Meaghan, rises through the fire of his pain. His last thought before he loses consciousness is: How odd that I should see her face now.

His memory over the next two weeks is spotty. There are snippets of an ambulance ride to the hospital, being wheeled into the Emergency Department. Lots of faces. People calling his name, saying “Mr. Maguire, can you hear me?” and “We’re going to move you now.” He remembers the pain, though. That he remembers just fine. It rose from his hip to his throat, like he was going to vomit out a scream. And then there’s a blank until he wakes up from surgery. He was thirsty which reminded him of Liam. Water was his only nourishment during his hunger strike. After a few days, his granddaughter, Alanna, is there, almost as if he conjured her up. She told Patrick that when he first saw her, he called her Meaghan, her mother’s name. This troubles him. He’s spent the last thirteen years trying to forget her.

In the middle of the third week, Patrick is back on a gurney, with no sense of how he got there. He’s watching fluorescent lights whiz by on the ceiling. A nurse is walking beside him, holding the bar on his bed. Patrick looks up at her and opens his mouth. Their eyes meet. “Hello there, Mr. Maguire. Did you have a nice nap? I’m Peggy, the ward manager. We’ll get you comfortable soon.” The word “ward” bounces around in his foggy head. Behind the nurse, are cream-colored walls and a medication cart. An orderly is wearing clothing that reminds Patrick of a prison uniform. It looks like the hospital ward where Liam died. “Am I in Long Kesh?” he asks aloud. Someone grabs his hand.

“Hello Gramps,” Alanna says. “That sedative they gave you really worked.”

She leans in to kiss him. He raises his torso, but pain ignites in his hip, and he reaches toward it. A pause. Is that a diaper?

“Why am I wearing . . .” Patrick can’t finish the sentence.

“It was just for the ride here,” Alanna says. “They’ll take it off soon.”

“Is this Long Kesh?” he asks again, knowing that’s impossible but he can’t get the words off his tongue.

His granddaughter rubs his shoulder. “This is Musgrave Park. The rehabilitation hospital. You remember, don’t you?”

Two hours later, he’s in a double room. The second bed is empty. Alanna is sitting on it, telling him it’s time to walk. Nurse Peggy wants him up every 30 minutes. He rises with his arms extended, like he’s doing deep knee exercises. The whiteboard across from his bed is bright with the words “Good morning!” Someone has drawn blue eyes, like Meaghan’s, into the O’s in “Good.” They’re watching him. A smile is underneath them but no nose. A therapist walks into his room.

“Good man!” he says. “Getting a head start on your rehab, so you are.”

“Will it hurt?” Patrick asks when the therapist says his therapy will start tomorrow.

“It may,” the therapist says. “A little pain is okay,” he explains, “but if it gets to be too much, you have to say something. Pushing past too much pain isn’t good.”

If there is one thing Patrick understands it’s pain.

“Can I take something for it?” Patrick asks.

The therapist looks concerned. “Are you in pain now?”

Patrick shakes his head. “When I exercise, I mean. To help me get through it”

“We don’t usually do that,” the therapist says. “Pain is one of the ways your body talks to you. And you have to listen.”

When Liam died after his sixty-six-day hunger strike, pain consumed Patrick. It fed on his body like a parasite, leaving gaping wounds that festered and oozed. When a wound healed, the parasite reopened it. For years after the funeral, Patrick thought he could smell the rotting flesh dying within him. He avoided small shops and enclosed spaces. There should be a pill for that, he thinks.

Patrick asks the therapist when he can go home. “It’s a little early for that, so it is, Mr. Maguire, but if you work hard, maybe in three weeks.” He pauses. Looks at Alanna. “That reminds me. You should start making plans to have some help when Mr. Maguire goes home.”

“Help?” Patrick asks.

“You know, someone to be with you. You won’t be back to normal for several months at least.”

“Go on with you now,” Patrick says. “I’m 84. I don’t need a babysitter.”

The therapist’s flashes a smile that looks cheeky to Patrick.

“We’re not talking about a babysitter, Mr. Maguire. Just someone to help you get around. Run errands. Prepare meals. You might need a wheelchair when you leave. Or a walker at the very least.”

The therapist turns to Alanna. “Is it yourself who’ll be staying with Mr. Maguire?”

Alanna shuffles. Digs her hands into her pockets. “We’re figuring that out.”

Patrick eyes her. Waits for her to say more. “There’s no room at my place for anyone else,” he says.

“We have to talk about that, Gramps.”

“Talk about what?”

“How cluttered your house is. We’ll never get you into the house in a wheelchair.”

“You’ve been in my house?” Patrick asks.

“You gave me the keys two weeks ago,” Alanna says. “Asked me to get some old newspapers you’d been reading. Don’t you remember?”

The thought of anyone in his house, touching things, rumbles his gut. Restlessness fills his legs. He taps his feet on the floor like they’re asleep. “I need to move,” he says, pushing the overbed food tray. It’s wheels squeak as it rolls away.

Alanna is talking again. “I thought I could start decluttering now that you’re here. You know. Make some room so you can get around.”

The word ‘declutter’ makes his insides twist. The moisture in his mouth disappears like he’s sucking on cotton. He needs water.

“Don’t touch a thing in my house,” he snarls.

Alanna steps back. Patrick pauses. An apology creeps into his tongue. After all, she came all this way. She’s the only one who cares. But hang on. Why is she scared? Is she guilty? Has she disturbed things already? Touched the pictures on his walls? Has she been in Liam’s room? A roar rises in his throat. He tries to stop it. He doesn’t want to scream at her, but then he does: “I won’t have it!” Alanna takes two steps back. Her eyes fill with water. She drags her shirt sleeve across her face. “Gramps,” she says in a small voice. “I just want to make space.”

“For what. For who? What are you planning?” Patrick yells.

The next day, a dull pressure is in Patrick’s head. The fog has returned. Guilt weighs on him, but he’s not sure why. He turns to look at the clock over his bed. It’s 10:35. Is she late? Has he done something? “What did you do?” he says aloud. “You can’t scare that girl away. She’s the only person who loves me.” The only one who called him every Sunday. Visited him during summers. Sent homemade cards for his birthday. Wrote him letters because calls were so dear. His siblings no longer care. Friends slowly disappeared after Liam’s death. She’s all he has.

Ten minutes later, Alanna walks in. A tentative smile is on her face. Doubt fills her eyes. There was a bomb scare on the Falls Road, she tells him. The buses were rerouted. She looks like she hasn’t slept. Did he do this to her? She hands him a copy of today’s Irish News. He scans the headlines. Another prison officer assassinated in East Belfast. “A revenge killing,” the story calls it. The same old Troubles. He turns to the sports section. Derry City F.C., Patrick’s football team, lost yesterday. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alanna watching him, craning her neck at the newspaper. “I watched the game last night,” she says. “The last-minute goal was a heartbreaker.” Patrick nods but says nothing. Stares at the blue eyes shining through “Good.” Liam’s voice is inside his head. Talk to her. But Patrick can’t move his tongue.

He reads the schedule on the dry erase board. Physical therapy at 11:00. Someone drew an exercising stick figure. Probably the same eejit who gave blue eyes to the word “Good.  Alana is watching him, asking he feels. What he had for breakfast. Talks about the weather. Her conversation starts and stops like a car stuck in traffic. An image of him yelling at her leaks into his brain. Why can’t he control himself?

Over the next week, the freeze between them thaws. Patrick has a new physical therapist, a woman this time. She’s full of praise, like a primary school teacher. He’s able to walk a little more each day. The pain in his hip is easing. His balance is returning. They’re working on his gait and strength-training. When Alanna visits, the therapist asks Patrick to perform. “He’ll be ready for the Belfast City 10K in no time,” she chirps as he walks into the hallway. “Going home will be a breeze. Speaking of going home,” the therapist adds, but Alanna changes the subject. At the end of the week, his doctor brings it up again. Soon, a social worker will visit Patrick to talk about a post-rehabilitation care plan. “Before we release you, we need to know that you are returning to a safe environment,” she says. Both Patrick and Alanna are silent. The doctor turns to Alanna. “He’ll need someone with him. Will you be living with Mr. Maguire until he’s ready to be on his own?”

Alanna looks down at her feet. “I’m working on that,” she says.

“Aren’t you staying?” Patrick asks.

“I told you, Gramps. I start school in a few weeks. Don’t you remember?”

“Ms. Maguire,” the doctor says, “he needs someone with him.”

“I’ll get someone. I have to make more calls.” She pauses. “To family.” Then she changes the subject. “The real problem is that the house is so cluttered. There are boxes and bags in every room. Things on the steps. There are places where his wheelchair will never pass.”

Impudent wee girl, Patrick thinks.

“Right,” the doctor says. “What I hear you saying is that the house is not yet ready for your grandfather.”

Alanna nods.

The doctor explains that social workers are often able to find help for people whose homes are not yet ready for their return. She’ll put in a request for one to visit Patrick.

Patrick doesn’t need anyone in his home, he says. He can’t afford to pay for help on his slaughterhouse pension. The doctor takes a deep breath. “Please understand, Mr. Maguire. When we’re ready to release you, if your living environment is not safe, you will have to go to a nursing home.”

After the doctor leaves, Alanna clears her throat. She has an idea. This makes Patrick suspicious. The doctor talks about going home and now Alanna has an idea? Dull pressure fills his head as she explains. Rather than decluttering without Patrick in the house, she can call him as she opens each box. Patrick can tell her what to do.

“Don’t be daft, lassie” he says. Alanna recoils, but he doesn’t care. He must see anything before she throws it out. “Bring the boxes here.”

“But that’ll take forever, Gramps. How will I get them here?”

“Take the Transit Link. It’s a ten-minute train ride,” he says.

The next day, Alanna arrives with the first box. She’s gasping for air. Complaining about how heavy it is. She’s borrowed a scissor from the nurse’s station. Patrick’s chest tightens as she cuts the seal on the lid.

Once it’s open, he pulls the box toward him. Alanna peers over the flap. “They’re just newspapers,” she says.

“Not just,” Patrick explains as he pulls one out. “This one’s from the five-year anniversary of your father’s death.” He points to the date: July 1986. “Why is this one on top? Did you open this?” Alanna shakes her head. He pulls out more.

“Do you really need all of them,” she asks? An hour later, she has her answer as she carries the full box back to the Transit Link.

The next day, she brings bags of old groceries. Expired crackers. Unused over-the-counter medications. Moldy bread still in its plastic wrapper. Smelly frozen vegetables that have long since thawed in their unopened boxes. “It’s amazing that you don’t have roaches,” she says as she throws these things out. Another bag contains canned goods that have not yet expired. He agrees to donate them.

Later in the week, Alanna arrives with an old blue suitcase.

“Gramps,” she says. “Do you really need all these trophies? And this suitcase is ancient.”

Patrick pulls out a trophy. Dusts it off with his bedsheet. The inscription says, “Liam Maguire. Rookie of the Year. U15 Group. 1967.” Patrick’s eyes grow glassy. He tells the story of the first game of that season. Liam running on thick white legs, dribbling the football across midfield on a breakaway. One second the ball is on his left foot. And the next, it crashes into the back of the net. His first goal in U15. “He scored three goals that game. Absolutely brilliant!”

He doesn’t tell Alanna that this was the year before Liam joined the IRA. Everything changed after that. Patrick pulls out the trophies one by one. The U12 group. U14. There’s an old, thick spiral notebook beneath the trophies. Alanna reaches for it, but Patrick stops her. He opens it on his lap and invites Alanna to sit next to him.

“Was that my da’s?” she asks.

Patrick nods. He reads Liam’s loopy, slanting cursive and chuckles. “My son,” he says, “was always in trouble.” Patrick shows Alanna the book. The same sentence is written down the length of the yellowing page. She reads it aloud: “I will not talk back to Sister Geraldine again.” Patrick’s eyes meet Alanna’s. He’s relieved that she’s smiling.

“Four-hundred-ninety times,” Patrick says. “It was supposed to be five hundred.”

“His handwriting was awful,” she giggles. “Did this work?”

“As far as I know, he never disrespected Sister Geraldine again,” Patrick says.

Alanna returns the book and Patrick caresses the letters. Traces them with his big index finger. “The things the nuns made the boys do,” he says and lays the book on his bed. Alanna reaches into the suitcase and pulls out a thick and fading manilla envelope. “Och, not that,” Patrick says as he reaches for it, but Alanna turns away. Pictures pour out onto the floor. She grabs a handful and flips through them. There is surprise on her face. Why can’t she leave well enough alone, Patrick thinks?

“This my mother.” she says. “She was so beautiful. So young. Look at her . . .”

Patrick doesn’t have to look to understand why Alanna has stopped mid-sentence.

She holds up images of her mother that have been cut from other pictures. “Did you do this?” she asks.

This is why Patrick doesn’t want her going through the boxes and bags alone. He needs to be able to explain. Alanna asks him again how he could cut her mother out like this. Something snaps in Patrick and anger rises again, clouding his brain.

“How can I cut her out? Are you mad in the head?” His voice rises. He can see Nurse Peggy looking his way, but he doesn’t care. “Your mother killed my son. Refused to sign a simple piece of paper that would have let doctors save him. Let him die right there in front of me.” Patrick points to the empty bed as if Liam is there. “Your mother is the reason for all of this. Liam’s death. Your grandmother’s death. Your brother in rehab. One signature could have changed it all.”

Alanna steps toward the door, the cut pictures still in her hand. “Off you go. Leave,” Patrick says. “Just like your mother did.” But instead of leaving, Alanna closes the door and spins toward him.

“I love you, Gramps, but I’ve listened to this for thirteen years. You weren’t the only one who lost someone. You weren’t the only one who was mad at her. I hated her for what she did.” Tears streak down her face. “If I could have pushed her off the plane we took to New York, I would have. I barely talked to her that first month in the Bronx. But you know what? She let me be angry. She absorbed all that hate. Just like she’s done with you all these years.” She pauses. “But you know the difference between you and me, Gramps? I gave her a chance. Let her explain. She told me about that other striker, the one whose family saved him the year before. The one who went without food for forty days, not sixty-six like my da.”

Patrick’s chest tightens and his hip begins to ache.

“I know you know this, Gramps. How that other striker suffered because his family intervened. How he blamed them. Wished they would have let him die. He was blind. Needed oxygen. Couldn’t walk very far. He went crazy. His family had to put him in an institution. My mother didn’t want that for us. We had suffered enough.” She pauses again and seems to be catching her breath. “That was my father’s wish. Do you know that? Do you know what Da said to her the night before he died?” Alanna pauses. Faces him with a glare that is so white hot it blinds him.

“Don’t make my children suffer anymore. Let me die and take them away.”

“Your da was delirious that night. He had no idea what he was saying.”

Alanna chokes out the words “How do you know?” through a sob.

Patrick considers this. How does he know? But then his wrath returns: “I can’t believe you’re siding with your mother.”

“There are no sides here, Gramps. No winning. Either way we would have lost. Da would not have been the same if he’d lived. Ma was thinking about me and my brother when she refused to sign. She had no other choice.”

This idea has buzzed into Patrick’s head before. He opens his mouth to talk, but Alanna slices her hand through the air just like her mother used to do.

“No,” she says. “You talked enough. It’s time you listen.” She stops like she expects him to say something and looks surprised when he doesn’t. “You hold onto all this stuff. Live in the past. Push everyone away. Insist that I stay here. Well, you know what? I can’t. I’m leaving for school in three weeks. And Ma is the only one who can help when I’m gone,” she says as she rips open the door.

That night, Patrick suffers a heart attack. Life is a blur now, like a telly with bad reception. Alanna is there. And then she’s not. When she returns, doctors explain things to her. There’s been some damage to his heart. He’ll need more rehab. Patrick has trouble following the rest of the conversation until Alanna says, “My ma will be here soon.” Patrick wants to yell, but all he can manage is a deep breath. Pain fills his chest. He cries out, “I’m having another attack.” Alanna is at his side. It’s not his heart. He has a few broken ribs. From when they brought him back.

In the days that follow, Patrick talks to Liam more. About how head-strong Alanna is. How she’s taken charge. How she’s disrupted things. Liam reminds Patrick that his fall disrupted his life, not Alanna. She just came to help. In fact, Liam thinks it’s high time that Patrick lets go. “Of my things,” Patrick whispers? No Da. Of your anger. Let Meagan come.

“Not Meaghan!” Patrick says aloud. His granddaughter is at his side. “You’re awake,” she says.

His days grow spotty again. Fractured images of nurses, injections, IVs, and bed pans fill his head. But then he’s home. Still in the wheelchair but glad for it. His ribs feel better. But something’s off. The lighting? Has Alanna changed bulbs? The house is less cluttered. Every day, they open boxes and bags in silence. She’s formal, like she’s at work. His things are organized into three piles: “Keep, discard, and maybe.” The “keep” pile is the biggest, but Alanna doesn’t complain. She finds more pictures of Meaghan buried deep inside some boxes and transfers them into a large wooden chest, which she places in the sitting room, where Patrick sleeps. Soon, Alanna wants to start decluttering the bedrooms upstairs, but Patrick asks her to wait. She doesn’t ask why.

Patrick thinks they have visited the cemetery together. Walked along the Falls Road, past the newsagent on Rockmore Road and Murphy’s Public house, which was destroyed by a UDA bomb. He wishes it could be rebuilt. “Your parents met there,” he says, trying to break Alanna’s silence. She nods. At Sevastopol Road, Patrick can almost see Alanna pausing at the mural memorializing the ten men who died during the 1981 hunger strike. “Your father’s hair isn’t quite right,” Patrick says.

Alanna looks up, squinting into the morning sun.

At home, Patrick has been spending time in Liam’s room. How strange that he’s not in the wheelchair. When he’s back downstairs, he dusts off his hands like he’s been hard at work. He’s surprised Alanna doesn’t ask him what he’s been doing.

One day, during their final week together, Patrick can’t find Alanna. He wheels himself to the staircase and sees Liam’s door ajar. He wants to climb the stairs to join her, to explain what’s there on the bed, but he can’t get his legs to move. He wants to tell her about the metal frame that Liam’s doctor built for him in his final days at Long Kesh. Liam’s skin had become so thin that the weight of the blanket was painful. The frame enabled the doctor to drape the blanket over Liam to keep him warm. That very blanket is folded neatly next to the frame. On top of it, is Liam’s Bible, the only book he was allowed to have in prison. Next to the Bible is the wool hat Liam wore in prison when he could tolerate the pain of it. And alongside that is the tiny, faded blue hat Liam wore in the hospital when he was born. Alanna walks down the stairs. The background behind her is blurry, like a portrait picture. Patrick starts to explain, but Alanna holds up thick notebook, like the one that contained Liam’s punishment work for Sister Geraldine. A worn brown folder is in her other hand. She looks confused.

“Why?” she asks raising the folder.

Patrick shrugs and reaches for it, but Alanna pulls away. He knows it contains dozens of copies of the affidavit Meaghan had refused to sign. On each affidavit, Patrick had signed Meaghan’s name and dated it July 8, 1981. The old, thick notebook is filled. On each page Patrick had written the same question repeatedly: “Did he have a choice?”

“Why?” she asks again. “This makes no sense.”

Patrick can’t explain. He’s surprised when a few tears leak from his eyes. He tries to wipe them away before Alanna sees. She pauses. Then she takes his hand and pulls him to the hallway phone. She gives him the receiver. He’s quick to hang up. Alanna picks it up again. “It’s time, Gramps.” She dials her mother’s number and puts the phone to Patrick’s ear. He listens to the line ringing in the Bronx. His body is shaking. He pulls away his head but then hears Liam. His voice is strong at first, but grows fainter each time he repeats, It’s time, Da. Patrick is transfixed. Then there’s a click. And Meaghan’s voice saying, “Good morning.”

Patrick is propelled back to his hospital room. The blue eyes are on the whiteboard, watching him through the good. Patrick slams down the phone and says, “I’m sorry, Meaghan. I can’t.”

“My name is Alanna, Gramps,” but Patrick’s eyes are closed. He’s listening for Liam but can no longer hear his voice.

 

 

About the Author

Don Reilly lives in Wayne, NJ. He is a writer and a professor at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ. His stories have been published in Promethean and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. One of his critical essays was published in an anthology entitled Moments of Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures. Currently, he is working on short works of fiction set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1981 hunger strikes.