And Then We Fall

by Bryce Taylor

  I'm not sure I know what I'm doing here. I wasn't expecting this. That I would like your mother. She is strong and real, more real than anyone I have met in a long time. Daniel. I thought he would be interesting. A challenge. I'd done some reading and some research and I thought I had answers. But I walked into your mother’s house and found myself. Lying on the floor, fists clenched. Unable to speak.

  If you are reading this. Then I don't know what to tell you. I thought I was coming here for you. That you would need me.

  I don't even know what to say now except that I don't want to leave.

  Your friend,

  Leigh

  Chapter 23

  Mam calls the next day and carefully asks how I am doing. I know she is expecting me to tell her to tell Leigh to leave. I can hear the worry in her voice, a brittleness that she will have to do without her.

  I don't.

  But I can't say anything to the effect that Leigh should stay because that would be too much right now, to think of Leigh in my Mam's house on Tuesday's and Thursday's, so close I could just stop off on my way home, make an excuse, any excuse to drop by.

  It takes days before Mam plucks up the courage to ask me, if she can stay. I say yes and Mam incorrectly takes that to mean that I am totally ok with the whole situation.

  Worse she takes that as a sign that it is fine to talk about Leigh on and off, peppering her conversation with anecdotes about what Leigh has done today.

  Of the new speech therapist that she has found for Daniel, a young guy called Joseph from Manchester with whom Daniel is willing to try talking in sentences. To show an interest in sounding out words.

  Worst of all is that I now call Mam every Wednesday and Friday without fail in the hope that she will tell me something of Leigh. That once I even drive past Mam's house, miles out of my way, just to see if I can sense her presence there.

  Mam mentions in passing one day that the app that Leigh and Daniel are using to talk is installed on her phone, so she can watch what they are saying when she goes out. I immediately install it on my phone and get Mam to login and spend an afternoon scrolling through from the beginning of their chats.

  In the last week they have graduated to a three-panel layout, a triptych so that they can have more complex conversations.

  Daniel is still mostly using one picture sentences,

  - Joseph.

  - Sandwich.

  - Thirsty.

  - Octonaughts.

  - Lego.

  - Sully.

  But he seems to understand Leigh who tends to say things with more context, that she'll be back on Tuesday. That they are going for a walk on Thursday. She is going to make sandwiches now. Each time she does he responds with the 'yes' ticks under the pictures. Or sometimes a 'no'. I slowly start to see the patterns of one tick under the last picture to say 'ok' or a 'I acknowledge' versus a tick under all three for an emphatic 'yes'. Just under the picture of the lego but not the Thursday picture to show that there is a yes for the lego, not for the two day wait.

  Slowly Daniel starts to use the occasional two picture sentences.

  - Home. Now.

  - Walk. Tomorrow.

  He starts to include himself in the pictures.

  - Daniel. Lego.

  - Daniel. Thomas.

  Leigh starts to introduce emotions but Daniel doesn't understand them. He never responds when she says that the lego makes her happy or that she is sad to leave. He certainly hasn't started to use them himself yet.

  Even when he clearly wants something badly, he doesn't say that it makes him sad or angry. But I can feel the emotion sometimes. Particularly on weekends when he has been two or three days without Leigh, the picture changing back and forth between Sully and Joseph with the 'now' finger pointing at a clock picture.

  Daniel: Sully. Now.

  Daniel: Joseph. Now.

  Daniel: Sully. Now.

  Daniel: Joseph. Now.

  Daniel: Sully. Now.

  Mam: Sully is coming tomorrow.

  Daniel: Joseph. Now.

  Daniel: Sully. Now.

  Daniel: Joseph. Now.

  Daniel: Sully. Now.

  Mam: Sully is coming tomorrow.

  Daniel: Ok.

  Mam: Lego?

  Daniel: Ok.

  When Leigh is with Daniel I spend the entire day staring at my phone, between patients, whilst writing up reports, during my breaks, whilst waiting for Em to get out of crèche.

  The days that they hardly talk at all on it are unbearably disappointing, as evening approaches and I know she will be leaving soon.

  I don't know exactly what I am waiting for.

  Early one morning when Leigh would have still been on her way, Daniel has already started talking.

  Daniel: Daniel. Pants.

  I'm frowning because it isn't likely that Daniel isn't wearing pants, his tracksuit is his safety blanket.

  Leigh is obviously confused too, she is using the rarely needed question mark under his pictures; I don't know what you mean?

  Daniel: Daniel. Shirt.

  Leigh: Daniel. Shopping. Clothes?

  Daniel wants to go shopping?

  Daniel: Yes, yes, yes,

  Leigh: Daniel. Shopping. Today.

  Daniel: Yes, yes, yes.

  Leigh: Sully. Daniel. Shopping.

  Daniel: Yes, yes, yes.

  I can feel Daniel's impatience from the rapid-fire speed he is saying yes, can see him, his back to Leigh hunched over the iPad.

  Daniel: Joseph. Pants. Shirt.

  I don't what would shock me more. That Daniel wants to dress like Joseph or Daniel wants to dress to impress Joseph.

  Leigh: Yes.

  Well, Leigh seems to know what is going on.

  I can't hardly even wait to find out from Mam what is going on here.

  There are no more messages for the day and I wait impatiently until after dinner when Leigh is gone and show up on Mam's doorstep without an excuse, just eager to see the day's developments, Em being sat at the next-door neighbour's house.

  I'm not disappointed, Daniel is at his table with his lego looking as if he is a Mormon on holiday. Neatly pressed chino's and a fresh out of the packet pale blue polo shirt tucked in so tightly you could bounce a coin off of it, new brown leather shoes, the cuffs of his pants for once the right length, his hair cut into a sharp semi-fashionable tapered cut and new rimless glasses.

  It's a vast change from when I saw him last week, extra-large tracksuit hanging off his gangly frame, his two months of haphazard growth from the buzzcut Mam gave him and his usual worn trainers.

  He is handsome.

  I stare at Mam in disbelief.

  "So?" I ask her, quietly in the kitchen.

  Mam is smiling.

  "Daniel has a crush," she says.

  Holy hell.

  "On Joseph?" I ask. Then. "He is a guy, right?"

  Mam laughs a little, sounding light hearted for the first time in weeks or possibly in years.

  She is staring at Daniel wonderingly and I am too. He seems almost human, I can suddenly see the family resemblance between us all. That Em has the same nose and eyes as him.

  She turns back to me.

  "It's not really like that," she says, "Daniel likes him a lot, he just wants Joseph to like him back."

  Sounds like a crush to me.

  "Is Joseph cute?" I ask her.

  Mam laughs wryly. "He is at that."

  She gets out her phone, laboriously brings up the browser, navigates to her favourites and loads a website, 'Words for Life'. Scrolls down through the images of the various staff and stops on one. An exceedingly handsome, broad shouldered lad with the most gorgeous dark brown eyes, tightly curly brown hair and flawless skin the colour of teak. Wearing a pale blue polo shirt with the logo of the business on it.

  I can't help but think that Daniel has good taste.

  I go home feeling buoyant and as is my wont now when I am feeling too much, either sad or occasionally h
appy, I cry and cry for an hour in front of the flickering telly after Em has gone to bed, a cup of a tea and an extra-large box of tissues my only companions.

  25) Boys, cars, go karts and model planes

  It's been three months since Diarmuid died, somehow both the shortest possible time and the longest. Three months since I last saw Leigh my mind tells me and I can't help but think of her all the time. Too often to be healthy and I'm constantly reminded by Mam, edgily watching for new messages, waiting for each development from Daniel.

  I'm terrible at reading him but even I can see that he is happier now, I think one could say he is happy. His now occasional meltdowns over in hours if not minutes. His willingness to try new things and new experiences. He has developed an insatiable interest in cars and demands to be taken for a drive in Leigh's Aston Martin every time she comes over, before she has even arrived. Leigh stopped driving the hatchback the day after Mam told her that she knew, having close to zero understanding what parking that car in Mam's driveway would do in a village like this.

  I know the effect because my patients start asking me, the ones who know Mam or one of her neighbours, through three or four degrees of separation and I'm mildly exasperated when a young man whose father's best friend is the local milkman for Mam's street asks me about the damn car.

  Leigh should know better than this.

  I'm less exasperated when I see Daniel immediately after one of their drives and see how happy he looks.

  They start by driving overlapping circles around the village, Daniel never comfortable with being far from home. Travel has always meant doctors and respite care and therapists and being poked and prodded.

  I know though that Daniel is starting to become more confident when I see the dot of Daniel's phone tracking getting further from home, as far as Kilderry and then further. That his sense of the outside world being dangerous being overtaken by a sense that there is more than Mam's house out there.

  Leigh builds a model glider in a single morning and then the next Thursday paints it perfectly, identically to the box except for some bright red chevrons down the fuselage.

  She has brought Daniel one too but when I go over he only turns the box over in his hands frowning at it, unwilling to remove it from its packaging.

  A week ago, he and Leigh started communicating through the app when she isn't with him, so now instead of anxiously watching their feed for two short days a week I am constantly refreshing it, watching for a sign of what she might be doing.

  She sends him a few videos of gliders flying, monotonously narrated by a gravelly voiced man, giving all the technical details of updraft and drift and Daniel gains a third love. It's lego, cars and now gliders. He spends the four days between Leigh's visits laboriously building and carefully painting his glider, putting it at the end of his table for me to inspect, standing side on to but his head cocked, listening to my admiration.

  Leigh and Daniel go through their schedule and decide that driving the car is for Tuesday and Thursday mornings, gliders for Tuesday afternoons and lego for Thursday afternoons, always a big project that will keep Daniel going until the following Tuesday.

  Mam starts to go out on the days that Leigh is here and I am aware that she has never had leisure time before or friends to enjoy it with. But it turns out that she does have friends in the village, people who she knew from before Daniel was born. She starts to tell me of the village garden club and coffees with friends and she starts a creative writing class at the local library.

  Daniel is starting to talk, hesitantly and not directed at any person in the room, but talking nonetheless. Facts about gliders and cars.

  It used to be that I was the only one in our family who did new things, whose life was moving, but at a time when mine is on pause, Daniel and Mam have brand new lives.

  Mam says that he and Leigh are able to have whole disjointed conversations, that she is readily able to converse about two parallel topics in tandem with him, unconcerned that he doesn't respond to her on the right one.

  They still use the app for planning, for questions, for interaction and I'm thankful for that because I have become dependent on it for a second ray of light in my life after Em.

  Mam rings me from outside her house one morning, I can hear her dragging back on her cigarette convulsively and she is laughing dazedly, telling me that Daniel has just asked Leigh a question, "can I have the red paint, please?" and we are both laughing, because it seems as if Daniel has just become self-aware at the age of thirty-eight.

  For Daniel's birthday Leigh takes him go-karting, to an old fun park that kids from families with more money than mine used to hold their birthday parties. Daniel of course has never been once, just the thought of getting him dressed appropriately and in the car, without even thinking of loud noises, of interactions with people, of unexpected happenings, of bathrooms and god knows what else has precluded him from this type of thing.

  When I hear of Leigh's plan I wonder how on earth she is going to make it happen, because Daniel has come a long way but not that far. Until I find that Leigh has hired the whole track and two cars just for them. She has organised with the owners for no staff to be around, for a parking spot down the side, there to be no need to walk through the amusement area, for a new helmet so that Daniel doesn't have to put something on that smells of others.

  In the weeks before the event they watch videos of people driving go-karts, building go-karts, fixing go-karts and any possible other interaction with a go-kart.

  The date marked in his calendar and counted down to.

  When the day finally comes around I am more excited about this one event then I should be. I would have given anything to be there. In my mind's eye I can see Daniel carefully watching Leigh, seeing her put her helmet on and start her go-kart, racing it around the track at high speed, cornering sharply around bends, not even once considering that she should be more restrained for Daniel's sake. Completely engrossed in her own experience, giving Daniel the space, he needs to adjust to the noise and the newness of it all.

  Daniel watching for lap after lap, a half-hour or more until he too wants a go, sitting cautiously in the driver’s seat, flipping switches, holding the steering wheel.

  Eventually starting the engine, driving forwards and backwards jerkily until he gets the hang of it, driving slowly around the track bumping into each and every corner, carefully reversing and trying again. Willing to keep going because only Leigh is there to watch him and she is still concentrating on her own driving, leaving him in peace to work this out by himself. Until he finally makes it around the track in one go.

  He would look quietly pleased in that way he has, not smiling or saying anything but a moment of introspection that if you weren't looking for it you would miss completely.

  Then no doubt hours and hours more of driving around and around in circles until he has had enough.

  Mam sends me a photo that Leigh takes of Daniel in his go-kart, holding his helmet. He isn’t smiling or looking at the camera but he looks happy or satisfied at least and that is more than I have ever seen from him out of the house before.

  I ask Mam that night about why she is letting Leigh do all this for us, unspoken that Mam obviously knows now that Leigh isn’t here because it is her job, she is here for whatever reason because of me and Mam has never been one to accept charity.

  "She needs this as much as Daniel and I do," she says eventually and I can feel something in my heart breaking.

  I resolve that I am going to get in contact with Leigh, that this has gone on for far too long, that if she is going to be in Mallow two days a week and spending time with Daniel and Mam then at the very least she can spare some time for me. That I will not have Mam understanding Leigh's intentions better than I do.

  Only I don’t know how to and the days stretch out and another week has gone by and I haven’t done anything at all.

  I don’t know if I’m afraid to find out that she only needs to spend an hour or two i
n my company to realise that I’m not what she remembered and leave me here alone without hope of anything better.

  Fate takes it out of my hands when our paths cross in the village, me with my groceries in hand from the Tesco, her coming back from the park at an easy run, dressed in tights and a singlet despite the near freezing temperatures. There is no one else around and neither of us can pretend not to have noticed each other when we have both caught the other looking.