In the Unlikely Event

by L.J. Shen

  “Are you going to need that cab?”

  Even I flinch at the callousness of my voice. This man is pushing eighty-five. I have no business talking to him like this. He coils his fingers over the table, still unable to lift his gaze and meet mine.

  “Oh, Rory. My dear Rory. Your mother didn’t tell you anything, did she? She never would.”

  I purse my lips, staring down at my Toms, like a punished kid.

  Please don’t light me on fire, God.

  Father Doherty eyes my suitcase by the table, finds the courage to look at me, and speaks.

  “Don’t go. Don’t leave for America. If you go, you will only lash out at Debbie, and she doesn’t deserve it. She loves you so much, Aurora. She always tried to protect you from everything surrounding Glen. I remember when she named you, she sent me a letter, explaining why she chose those names for you. Because she wanted you to have the fairytale, something perfect and uncomplicated. She never wanted all this mess to touch you.”

  “Yet it did,” I seethe, feeling my teeth grind against one another.

  He wipes his tears with the base of his thumb, sniffing.

  “It most certainly caught up with me, and blew up in my face.”

  Mal

  The best (and perhaps only good) part of being from a small town is that people look out for you. Fifteen minutes after Rory stormed out, while I paced a hole in the floor trying to figure out my next move, I got a ring from my barman Dermot at The Boar’s Head, letting me know my grandfather was having a lively conversation with a young woman.

  My woman.

  I run to my car and drive like a rabid dog after snapping back to reality. I throw it in park without turning off the engine and look up to see her getting into a cab. The vehicle is an ugly, seventies Renault that coughs its way down the road. Rory is in such a rush to leave, she didn’t want to wait for a decent ride.

  This is how much she hates you.

  I run, motioning to my wife to lower her window, and guard, and feck—will she just listen?

  Rory pretends I don’t exist, staring straight ahead at the back of the driver’s seat, her sunglasses perched on the tip of her button nose. I rap on the window with my fist, coughing out fifteen years’ worth of sex as my sole physical activity.

  “Slow. Down.”

  My request falls on deaf ears.

  “The hell with you, woman.” I slap the roof of the car, and the driver speeds up in response, so I run even faster. (Who in their right mind does this for fun?)

  I can’t let her go. Well, I guess technically I can. Perhaps I even should, but I won’t. Not without a fight. And she needs to learn the entire truth, even if it rips us both to shreds.

  “I didn’t tell you about Glen because I was sworn to secrecy. Because look at you—you’re devastated. Because I knew, selfishly, that if you found out about Glen, you wouldn’t have room in your heart to fall in love with me eight years ago. Which you did, Rory. We fell in love in less than twenty-four hours. And it took us less than a week, almost a decade later…”

  I slap my hands on my knees and pant, sucking in as much oxygen as I can, before resuming my chase. She is still staring at the back of the driver’s seat as if it’s the most mesmerizing thing since fiberglass manufacturing. (No, seriously. Look it up on Google. It’s fantastic.)

  “…to remember how we can’t live apart. Not really. Exist, maybe, but not live. And it’s not like I completely shielded you from the truth. Trust me, I battled this shite internally. I did. That’s why I took you to Kathleen. It was my coin-flipping moment. I told myself if you really were meant to know, she’d tell you the truth. She didn’t, Rory.”

  She still gives me nothing.

  “Yes, I fecked up. Yes, I kept the truth from you. About you. About me. But none of it was because I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to protect you. To shield you from the past. It’s called past because it passed! We have a present, Rory. A future.”

  Her nose twitches in annoyance. It’s the slightest movement, but it gives me hope—not that she will forgive me, but that she might be pissed enough to stop the cab, get out, and smack me in the head.

  “Fine. A part of it wasn’t entirely altruistic. Of course, I wanted to feck you again when I saw you. Who wouldn’t? Look at you.”

  Her nose tics under her sunglasses again, her lips folding under her teeth.

  She is angry.

  I’m about to make her angrier.

  “Want to know if you love someone? Watch them suffer and see how much it tears you apart. Because when you were down, when you hurt, Rory, every fiber of me burned right along with you. You leaving without listening to what I have to say simply solidifies my suspicion all along: Your skin is not the only thing cold about you. Your heart is frozen, too. I loved you from the start. You, however, were always more interested in my dick and my Irishness. You really took daddy issues to a whole new level, darlin’.”

  I can see her hand gripping the door handle. She barks something to the driver, and the car slows down gradually, not yet coming to a full stop. I know I’m close, so I put the final nail into the coffin. The one I was waiting to share with her on another, happier occasion.

  “Oh, and another thing: That napkin you just tore apart didn’t mean jack-shit. You said you didn’t believe in kismet when we first met. I forgot to mention—neither do I. I sought you out eight years ago, after you left. I sent you letters and gifts and tried to track you down. I called your house and your mother and your dorm, trying to get to your cell number. Want to know something else? I hunted you down last year, too—saw your name on the back of a Blue Hill Records cover and put two and two together. I knew you were working for that wanker, Ryner. So I accepted his offer to write Richards an album, because I wanted you near me. It was never fate. It was never luck. I demanded to have you at my disposal, Aurora Belle Jenkins. You were a part of a package deal. It’s not fate; it’s us. From start to finish. Twisted, screwed, obsessed, destructive, wonderful us.”

  The car comes to a stop, the driver punching the steering wheel with frustration. I watch as Rory bursts out the back door like fireworks, shaking her fist in my face.

  “How dare you! We said no seeking each other out. You used that napkin to make me marry you! You lied!” She pushes my chest.

  She is completely red, her hair a mess.

  “Bullshit!” I laugh in her face, shoving her away, no longer able to tolerate anything less than the truth. “You married me not because of that stupid napkin, but because you let me shove my fingers, and a chocolate bar, and my tongue into every hole of yours I had interest in invading while you still had a boyfriend. Because that’s what we do. We run people over to get to each other. We destroy everything in our way, other than ourselves.”

  The cab driver gives me a look of interest, listening with his tongue out, practically panting. Probably should’ve kept the chocolate bar bit to myself.

  “You’re lying. You’ve never sought me out.” She points at me, manic.

  I laugh harder. I can’t help it, because now that the truth is coming out—why not let it all out? She deserves to know what her mother did, even if it makes both her parents intolerable arseholes.

  I turn around and stomp back toward my cottage (feck the car), and she follows me, because I hold the one thing she wants—the truth.

  “Try again, Rory. Why do you think I hated you so much? Why do you think I married Kiki? Why do you think all the bad shit happened? I chased you around, and your mother told me you wanted nothing to do with me. She said I should move on. That you’d found another lad to keep you warm at night. She sent me the pictures you took of me, with the god-awful things you wrote about me on the back of them.”

  I turn around to see her face morphing from angry to horrified.

  Her features twist in pain. “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said when I screwed you six ways from Sunday and gave you enough orgasms for a decade of PornHub material. Yet apparent
ly, I tried too hard. And you know what? I did. I did try far too hard, because I wanted no one else to compare.”

  “No one did compare!” she screams in my face. “Happy? No one compared, which is why I didn’t date until Callum came along. There was no other guy. I wrote those things on the back of your pictures because I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and Summer gave me an exercise in trying to find the bad things in you, and those were the only things I could come up with. You were damn near perfect. When I came back from college, I turned my room upside down so many times, desperate to find your photos, because they were the only thing I had left of you. And I didn’t want to look you up on social media, because I still honored the stupid contract. I cried days and nights about those pictures, Mal.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, taking a deep, cleansing breath. “I sent you dozens of letters. They were redirected to your New Jersey address, and you never saw them.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The cherry on the shit cake? Your mother told me I got you pregnant and you had an abortion.”

  There’s radio silence from her side of the bare shoulder of the road, so I open my eyes to look at her. She is staring back at me, stunned.

  “Is it true?” I ask quietly.

  She shakes her head slowly.

  Thank God.

  “I’m speechless right now,” she admits.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But also, sort of relieved, because now you’re angry at someone else.”

  “Is that why you and Kathleen got married? Had a child?”

  “Yes. I mean, no…I don’t know.” I shake my head, pacing back and forth.

  The cabbie dumps her suitcase and backpack onto the side of the road and drives away, leaving us in this field, and it’s getting dark, and cold, but neither of us seems to care.

  “This is how it happened: I got so furious with you, I pulled a Glen and went to get myself two bottles of something terribly strong to knock myself unconscious. Kathleen was there, at the newsagents, and she sort of jumped into my car without my consent, but I was so lethargic, I didn’t even have the strength to kick her out. We got piss-drunk. Well, I did, anyway, and that’s how it happened.”

  There are tears clinging to Rory’s lower lashes, and I wish I could kiss them away, but I don’t think we’re there yet. I don’t know if we ever will be. I try to ignore the possibility of never kissing my wife again.

  “You slept with my sister, Mal.”

  “She…”

  I know this will be the first and last time I say this. Not just because Kathleen is dead and I honor her memory, but mainly because I never, ever want Tasmin to know how she was conceived. She doesn’t deserve this horror of a story. I refuse to saddle her with a truth that has nothing to do with her.

  “I wasn’t conscious, Rory. I mean, well, not fully. I said no. Several times, I think. But I wasn’t completely there when Tamsin was conceived. This marriage I dangled in your face…it was a sham. A lie. Kiki knew it, too.”

  The tears fall from Rory’s cheeks to her feet, and she is quivering like a leaf dancing on the ground in fall.

  I continue, undeterred, “I’m not going to lie, though. Kathleen reminded me of you, and at that time, I was under the impression you were something I would never be able to have. So I settled for the closest thing. Her. I’m not proud of what I did or how I did it.”

  ”Rory, Rory, Rory,” I remember chanting every time I was inside Kiki. Like an unanswered prayer. A requiem for a broken heart.

  “When we found out she was pregnant, I was pressured by everyone we knew to tie the knot. She’d been a virgin before, and our families would have killed us. And, frankly, I stopped trying. I thought maybe becoming a father would distract me from you.”

  “Did it?” She’s sobbing openly now.

  I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her to let it all out. Yet, I’m rooted to the road’s shoulder, waiting for her to come to me just once in this lifetime.

  I’m tired of doing the chasing. I’m tired of losing just so she can win. I’m exhausted from plotting how to court her, how to have her, how to ruin her, how to keep her, while she keeps fighting it.

  Sure, initially, I didn’t tell her about Tamsin because I thought she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to need to know, and I wanted to protect my daughter. But the minute Rory said “I do,” things became real.

  And that was the moment I shoved my reality under the carpet for a woman.

  I hid my daughter for a lover.

  Never again.

  “Nothing made me forget you. The night Tamsin was born was also the night Kiki died. Consequently, it was also our wedding day.” I let all the events sink in. “I know I was more than a bit short with you the day Tam celebrated her birthday. Actually, I was a full-blown arsehole. But I was hurting, the pain coming from so many directions. I didn’t want to be touched, not to mention prodded.”

  Her eyes meet mine with understanding.

  “After the wedding, we came back home, and Kiki found the napkin. Our contract. She told me to throw it away.” I wait a beat, watching her face.

  She stops breathing altogether and waits for me to continue.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  She lets out a ragged breath and starts crying harder.

  “She ran. And I chased her, like I chased you just now. But with you…”

  I suck in a breath. The truth hurts. It cuts you open. That’s why we hide it from the ones we love. From the people whose opinion we care about.

  “With you, I chased harder.”

  Rory

  She died because of us.

  She didn’t stop at a stop sign, because the only thing she cared about was running away. After the accident, Kathleen had been rushed to the hospital. Tamsin’s heartbeat was faint, but the doctors were also concerned for the life of her mother. The baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen and was in distress.

  My sister’s last words were, “Save him. I know I can’t make it. He can.”

  She thought Tamsin was a boy, and that he would live.

  She got one thing right. The important part.

  Kathleen was pronounced dead shortly after Tamsin was delivered—close enough that she didn’t get the chance to hold her daughter in her arms. Because of the impact caused by the collision with the truck, Tamsin was born with spinal damage and had to undergo a complicated operation when she was barely old enough to see shapes. Mal shelled out some serious cash to make sure his daughter was given the best medical treatment. Experts were flown from all over the world. He’s been writing and selling songs ever since, never looking back or stopping to consider what he wanted for himself.

  The first songs he sold were about me.

  He was furious with me. He blamed me for the argument leading to Kathleen’s death. He became a single father before he’d even turned twenty-four. And for what? A girl who’d allegedly had an abortion with his baby and told him to stop writing to her after he confessed his family was falling apart.

  On our way back to the cottage, while we are both in too much shock to touch the Kathleen subject, Mal opens up about Maeve.

  “Her husband, Sean, was the lorry driver who collided with Kathleen. We were friends, before…” He looks up and shakes his head. “We were mates once. But when the accident happened, when he was bursting with adrenaline, his truth came out. He told me I never deserved my wife. That I never truly loved her. He screamed that she died because of me.”

  I wince. The truth has a way to hit you harder than any lie. It’s what you need to face when you look in the mirror every day.

  Sean had reminded him he was unworthy of his wife.

  So Mal reminded Sean he wasn’t worthy of his either.

  “I took Maeve as a lover to prove she didn’t love him, just like I didn’t love Kiki. I paraded her around Tolka as retaliation, making a point of doing it openly. I kissed her in public places, pinched her arse in the queue when we were at the bank.
In short, I was a cunt. I hurt so much, I wanted to hurt others. I’m just grateful you weren’t around when I was at my worst.”

  “Then you took other women to bed, too? Why?” I ask, my voice barely audible.

  “Being with Maeve gave my loneliness a kind of…I don’t know, a stubborn quality. She was in it because she thought we had a future and she wanted her hands on whatever money she thought I had, but I was in it for revenge. What finally made me stop was hearing her kids were being bullied at school because everyone knew their mam was sleeping with a man who wasn’t their dad. I couldn’t stomach it. I broke it off and wrote Maeve a check to send them to a school where no one knew them and they could start fresh. Then I tried to erase the aftertaste of Maeve with an ever-growing line of women who knocked on my door. But the longer the line became, the shorter my attention span grew. In the last few years, I’ve been solely focused on Tamsin. She’s the only thing that’s kept me sane, the only person who’s mattered. Until you.”

  I say nothing to this, because even though I’m flattered, I can’t help but also feel angry.

  “When I saw your name on the back of that cover, I had a Pavlovian response,” he continues. “I picked up the phone and accepted the job Ryner had offered me months before. I laid down my ultimatums, and one of them was doing things my way—demanding you as the photographer. Ryner desperately needed a hitmaker for Richards. He agreed to all of my requests, including this crazy one to transport you here. It’s amazing what you can get away with in the name of the creative process. I could’ve told him I needed the entire Victoria’s Secret cast and ten kilograms of cocaine to write this album and been the happiest pig alive.”

  I swat him when he says that, and can’t help but laugh because he could have said it, and still, it’s me he asked for.

  “So, I moved Tamsin to her grandparents’ house for a couple months and planned on making your life miserable and sabotaging your career. I know, extremely toddler-like of me. Trust me, it didn’t sound as outrageously stupid when I thought about it without saying it out loud. I wanted to make your boyfriend break up with you, to shove your face in the reality I’ve lived. But very early on, I learned two things that stood in the way of my Marvel-villain-like master plan.”