Every Friday morning, Mam shooed us all out of the house before settling to the ironing and her secret indulgence. Máiréad and I crept back and peered around the window.
Mam turned to the heap of shirts and pinafores that we trailed in the Kerry mud and smeared with blackberry juice. “You’ll be the death of me,” she always said.
A fading photo propped next to the mantel clock captured a June day fifteen years earlier. Mam solemn and fragile in her white dress, Da looming over her.
The clock pinged the hour. Mam twisted the dial on the wireless. Words seeped around the loose window frame.
“It’s eleven o’clock. Time for Housewives’ Choice with Seán Cooke.”
A smile tickled the corners of Mam’s lips. A rumpled shirt lay forgotten beneath her hands.
Seán’s lilting voice slipped through the glass, caressed the casement. Like stroking velvet. He had to be a wonderful-looking man. Da didn’t sound like that, and he wasn’t wonderful looking.
Protected in her bubble of melody and musing, Mam never saw us. Da said we mustn’t waste the battery on fancies, so she switched off before he came for his lunch. She dabbed at her eyes. A bit of gentle music always brought her to tears.
*
We weren’t the death of her. She faded out like the wedding photo.
The whole village turned out. A little man stood apart. He had a face like a turnip, but it had a kindness in it.
Afterwards, Da strode away. The others streamed behind him in a ragged line, but I hung back. A stone dragged down my heart.
The little man crumbled earth into the grave.
“I didn’t know you were sick, Annie. I’m sorry for everything.”
A voice like stroking velvet.
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