by Bryce Taylor
Then Leigh is standing in the drive, as if she left for only a minute, changed from her jeans and t-shirt into a narrow black suit, black shirt, her blonde hair shorter and styled, fine hair swept back. She is immaculate, unaltered, the weight of age has not laid a single finger on her. I have never been so happy to see someone.
So relieved.
A familiar friend visiting from an alternate universe that my best friend and husband did not die.
She sees me, staring at her from over the picket fence, through the leaves of the neighbour's willow tree and I'm striding down the path, the crunch of gravel cutting into bare feet.
She is frozen uncertainly, one hand still on the roof of her car, watching me. I take the last two steps, quickly, gathering momentum, throwing myself into her arms, my arms closing around her, locking her to me, my head buried in her neck, her arms closing around me, tentatively and then tightly, so tightly that I can pretend that this right now is all that there is. No room between us for thought. Breathing her in, the scent of vanilla, feeling her hard and reassuring body against mine. Her hand in my hair, firmly, well aware that I am strong enough to be held this tightly.
I don't know how long we would have stood there leaning against her car but Em interrupts, a hand tugging on Leigh's jacket.
"Excuse me," she says, her high little voice, fully formed sentences incongruous as always from such a small person, "will you take me to the park?"
Leigh lets me go, the aching loss that she has held away for a few short moments snapping back into my body with a lurch. She kneels so that she is at eye height with Em.
"Yes, little one," she says, the sound of her familiar voice, yet more Australian than I remember, clanging in my head, a bell. She says it as if this is the most natural thing, my ex-lover to turn up on the day of my husband's death and take our child to the park. I suppose it is.
Em is pleased, smiling widely at Leigh, looking so much like her father that the tears that have been threatening to overflow start, just a drop at each corner of my eye.
"Go," I say harshly, brittle, terrified of breaking, crumbling out here on the driveway in front of the neighbour's twitching curtains, "Em knows the way, she can take you."
Leigh nods and holds out a hand to Em who takes it, little Em who won't play with the other children at crèche. Who has never been in any danger of getting lost in the supermarket aisles her little fingers clutching the folds of denim at the back of my knees, pressing her small body shyly behind my leg, eyes cast down, fixed on my shoes.
"What is your name?" she asks Leigh, tugging on her hand, pulling her down the driveway, towards the park. Leigh doesn't look back, neither of them do, they don't see the flood of tears burning trails down my face. For that I am grateful.
I manage to make it inside, the physicality of my life hitting me with the suddenness of a freight train, a break in my ribcage, stabbing pain down my arms and a numbness in my body. That Diarmuid died this morning and part of me went with him. I curl in a ball at the door, on the cold tiles, sob and sob and sob until I start to notice the dust and marks on the floor.
Until I feel silly and melodramatic.
Until my stomach aches.
My watch tells me I have been crying for thirty-five minutes before my mind has wandered to cleaning. To practical matters. I wonder if that is all Diarmuid is going to get, me crying on our dirty hallway tiles for half an hour.
By the time they get back an hour later, just as I am starting to worry, when I realise I have a very expensive sports car in the driveway and nothing else to trace her, they walk up the driveway, still holding hands. Em talking in that very serious way that indicates that she needs a nap before she turns into a monster.
Em sees me at the window and runs into the house, chattering about all the things they did at the park. I don't hear her. Leigh is lounging in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, her jacket draped over one shoulder. I want her so very badly to come in. I don't want to be alone. Painfully aware that my marriage is now over despite the fact that I didn't want it to end.
That I don't want to be alone today.
We are staring at each other. I have no idea what Leigh is thinking.
Why she is here.
How is she here?
Em is tugging at my t-shirt.
"Mam, I need to go to the toilet and then I need to show Leigh Mr Bear and then I need to go to sleep," she says.
Christ.
"Come in," I tell Leigh, wishing I lived in a nicer house, "do you want a cuppa?"
She smiles, nudging my broken heart in a friendly sort of a way. "
Sure," she says, the first word she has said to me in six years. Bustling around the kitchen is a relief, despite the pressure of her eyes on me. I make her peppermint tea without asking, forgetting that she may not drink it in the years that stretch between us.
Em comes back in, dragging Mr Bear behind her by the leg. Hands him to Leigh. Blinks once, twice, sleep taking her over. She holds her arms out to Leigh who picks her up, a rag doll, bundled up with her bear, her tiny arms falling slackly down over Leigh's back.
"I'm just going to put her to bed," Leigh says quietly, my child draped over her capable shoulder.
I stand in the doorway to Em's room, watch Leigh cajole Em into taking off her shoes and laying down on her bed. Reading her 'The Snail and The Whale' until she falls asleep. I'm staring at the mud stain on Leigh's pants, from where she has knelt on the ground at the park, careless of the damage.
We go back to the lounge, Leigh sitting straight-backed on the end of the couch, sipping her tea. We sit there in uncomfortable silence because Leigh apparently has no desire to use the meaningless platitudes that she is so good at on me.
Eventually, she looks up from her tea and I fall into her ice blue eyes, an ache in their depths, so mutely pained that I can't help but think that I'm imagining my hurt in them but the dark rings under them aren't my imaginings at all.
"We had fun at the park," she says softly, breaking me from my reverie, "Em is hilarious and very bossy, we had to do each piece of equipment in order three times and then she showed me where all of the creatures live in the willow tree."
Leigh pauses, her eyes meeting mine. "She reminds me of someone I used to know."
I laugh, hiccup and choke on my tea and start to cry again. It hurts as if I have overstressed my crying muscles. Leigh puts her tea down carefully on a coaster on the coffee table as if it matters and gets up and pulls me up into her arms and cradles me, one arm around my back, the other cupping my head. I hold onto the front of her shirt, weakly, the very marrow of my bones drained and dried, fingers and heart trembling, losing the will to stay, to go, lost. The overwhelming smell of her, of home, an invasion, in my house, the house Diarmuid and I made together.
The love I have for her, have always had for her, is molten metal crashing into the icy grief of Diarmuid, splitting me asunder.
That I want Diarmuid back, that I can't cope with any of this right now.
"What are you doing here?" I ask, raspy, nails on a chalkboard.
"Diarmuid," she says roughly.
Diarmuid.
My forehead is resting on her shoulder, fingers hooked into the soft linen of her shirt. I can't bring myself to move or ask her to explain. I have nothing left but questions and pain.
She takes a small breath.
"I got here a year ago for a job at Cork University hospital," she says slowly, her words unpractised, "I looked you up, to, anyway, I found out about Diarmuid and I didn't. I thought."
She stops. I can feel her looking up at the ceiling.
"When I heard this morning, I thought, well, I didn't know, I thought you might need a shoulder," she finishes awkwardly.
All I have got from all that, is that she has been here a whole year. A whole fecking year and nothing.
I am furious with her.
Insanely angry.
A white-hot fury giving me strength.
; "I don't need a fecking shoulder, Leigh," I say, pushing my head back from her shoulder, my voice rising. "I have a child and rent to pay and a sick mother and retarded brother."
I'm shouting now and Leigh is looking at me, her head tilted sideways, grave, worried. Not at all bothered by my temper, still never that.
"I need a lot, but I don't need your fecking shoulder," I grind out, my voice still loud enough to echo around this small room.
Leigh glances down the hallway towards Em's room as if to remind me that my daughter is sleeping.
Like I don't know.
"Get out Leigh," I tell her.
She opens her mouth.
"Get the fuck out," I tell her before she can say anything. My fists are clenched. If she thinks I'm just a little crazy because my husband and best friend just died, then she is dead wrong.
I'm a lot crazy and I know just who I can take it out on.
She takes a step backwards and another.
"Let me know if you need anything," she says softly.
"I don't need you," I tell her, in my dangerous, too flat, watch out for objects flying at your head voice, "I don't need you at all. I never want to see you again."
Her clear blue eyes are fixed on mine.
She nods and turns, walking from my house.
Her car exiting the driveway and my street taking her with it.
The next few days pass, too quickly, thousands of things to do, none of them things I want to do. Katie comes home from Spain and for a short time I have someone to lean on. Who can get a new suit for Diarmuid so that he isn't buried in the one he was married in. Who can answer the phone calls and text messages and organise the funeral? Who can tell Em patiently one more time about Daddy, answer one more fecking question about where Daddy is now.
I somehow expect Leigh to be at the funeral.
She isn't.
It's a small affair so I can't expect that I've missed her.
Part of me wants to text her, to apologise, to see if she wants to have coffee or something. Not that I can afford the coffee in either time or money.
I don't even have her number.
Anyway, what can I do? The distance between us is not physical.
Katie goes home after the funeral, looking worried about leaving me. But she has a family too.
I tell her to go, I'll be fine.
I know I won't though.
I'm drowning, being dragged under.
I was looking at Mam during the funeral, through a eulogy I couldn't listen to, thinking that she was looking too old for someone who just turned sixty. Tired and drawn.
The two days of in-home care that started for Daniel a year ago are not enough take the weight off her shoulders. Not that they do much anyway, these kids they send over. Who Daniel scares away with his tantrums and silences.
What will I do when Mam can't look after him anymore? What will Em do? Will she have to grow up as fast as I did?
The pall of reality is more terrible than the loss of Diarmuid. The days and weeks and years stretching before me.
Chapter 21
In the days after the funeral is when my grief truly comes. When I am crippled by an inability to get out of bed, when I cry all of the time for no reason at all. When the loss of a slice of my soul and a tear in my heart is waking me with a pain so strong that I am curling into a ball trying to escape from it all. When I wake in the morning and reach my hand to Diarmuid’s side of the bed and find only empty air because I'm already on his side of the bed.
Mam somehow finds the time to do all the necessary things, the washing and the shopping and meals. To take Em to crèche. I don't know how and I don't ask because I'm not interested in the answers.
It isn't until one morning as I am staring at my hands blankly that I hear a small noise from Em. She is sitting in the corner, ignoring her books and toys, crying quietly and easily as that the spell is broken. I'm suddenly able to contain my grief to the interval between Em's bedtime and morning.
When I see the damage I have done to Em, when I realise that Mam has used the meagre savings that she has to pay my rent I find the will to do what I should have all along. I return to work and every spare moment outside of that I spend with Em who much to my relief immediately returns much to her normal self. She still has a lot of questions about Da and I almost wish that Diarmuid and I had at least pretended to be religious because everyone has been telling her about Daddy being in heaven and I can't bring myself to lie to her.
I'm at Mam's house weeks and weeks later, dropping off some casserole dishes. Unable to avoid her house and Daniel for any longer.
Mam says that things are not bad at the moment. There is a new carer for Daniel, who has made some changes, that Daniel is better.
I've heard that before.
She's not kidding about the changes, though I think as I let myself in.
The house is tidy for once. That is new.
The junk that is in the hallway all gone.
The lounge and kitchen are immaculate. Books on shelves, benches cleared. The lounge has been re-arranged, the couch and telly have been moved to one side of the room. One the other, two trestle tables with lego on them. Daniel at one. Neat white tape on the floor has carved out the borders of two rectangles of space around them.
Mam's lounge is large for a council flat, to make up for the stinginess of the two bedrooms and single bathroom I suppose. It looks far larger now with all the boxes and appliances and magazines gone or away somewhere.
Daniel is standing at one table, the one furthest from the side with the telly and the couch. Staring at the lego ponderously as if it contains the meaning of life.
I raise an eyebrow at Mam. She is sitting on the couch watching a soap. She is dressed neatly, as if the tidiness of the house has leeched into her as well. The television is half the volume it normally is.
Something else.
I frown around at the room until it hits me, her ashtray and cigarettes are gone. Her perpetual companions, everywhere but my house where she isn't allowed. It still stinks in here, not as bad as before though, half as bad or even less.
Mam is only too happy to explain the changes, a miracle she calls it.
Daniel needs his own space she says. That is what the taped lines are for, no one can go into Daniel's space but Daniel. If she needs to put anything in there she has to leave it in the square at the end, pointed to a small area marked with black tape at the kitchen end of Daniel's area, 'the neutral zone', she says.
She points at the plastic sleeve on the far wall, with an iPad in it that I hadn't noticed.
I can see there is a picture of me showing on one side of the screen and a clock on the other side, the hands at six o'clock. Five minutes ago.
Mam shows me. She has an iPad too. It is so that she and Daniel can communicate.
"He can talk," I tell her incredulously.
"He prefers not to," she says calmly.
She taps on the screen. She changes one side to a photo of roast beef, vegetables and gravy. The clock on the other side to seven.
She taps another button and Daniel's iPad buzzes briefly. He looks up at it, face blank and then back down to his lego. He stares at two bricks in his hand for a moment, before putting them down. Goes over to his iPad, carefully starts swiping the screen till after a few minutes the picture on the left changes to fish and chips.
He waits, his back to both of us.
Mam changes the clock on hers to a cartoon picture of a boy in a red t-shirt and blue shorts and leaves the fish and chips.
"That's the picture Daniel picked to represent himself," she says. So, I guess this is how mum now can tell him he can make his own fecking dinner.
Daniel stares at the iPad for a moment. Puts it down carefully on the ground. Stands over it with his fists clenched. He stands frozen for a minute, stiffly and I wait, feeling the dread of a tantrum, Daniel unable to bring himself back from this brink, a tantrum waiting in the wings.
Then h
e slowly picks the iPad up, changes the screen with his picture to a calendar. I look over Mam's shoulder, the square for this Friday has a big green tick in it.
She taps the bottom of each screen and a tick appears on both sides.
"I suppose we are having fish and chips on Friday," she says, but she is smiling indulgently at Daniel.