And Then We Fall

by Bryce Taylor

  I smile at her encouragingly when she stops a few car lengths from me awkwardly unsure what to do. She shyly walks the remaining few steps to meet me at my car, her eyes cast down.

  Leigh's bare limbs are reddened with the cold, with her heat that is burning up from within and I take a half step closer to her as if to warm myself. She is staring back at me, silently, pulling her earbuds out, pausing her music on her armband, absently coiling the cable neatly around her long fingers and I subconsciously glance down to see if I can detect any unsteadiness in them before I catch myself and bring my eyes back to her face, remaining unenlightened.

  "Hiya," I say inanely, the déjà vu of the first time we met hitting me physically.

  She smiles and I can see a quiet sparkle of amusement in her eyes and wonder if she is remembering the same thing.

  "Hi," she replies dryly.

  I want to hug her, a longing to feel her, to make sure she is real but I think those times are gone from us forever and I bite my lips together.

  Leigh opens her mouth and shuts it, thinking better of what she was going to say. She clenches and unclenches her free hand, a sign so familiar to me that I can't help but feel a tug of need to help her, to draw out whatever it is she needs to say.

  "Spit it out," I tell her lightly and smile at her reassuringly when she stares at me in surprise as if I have uncovered all her secrets.

  "I've been thinking about buying a house in the village," she says eventually, cautiously.

  I stare at her in disbelief. I didn't have any inkling of what was in her head, but if I did this was not it.

  She clears her throat.

  "It's ok if you don't want me to," she says, misunderstanding my look.

  I don't even know what to think, the connection Leigh and I have is undeniable. The attraction to her also, I'm painfully aware of it as she is standing in front of me, all smooth muscles and long limbs, her face that I just want to cup in my hands, to trace each of her never forgotten features one by one.

  I also remember the hurt of not ever truly having her, of her having me, every last corner but only showing me the smallest part of herself. That I no longer have the blithe confidence of a good body.

  The silence is stretching out between us and Leigh is looking away.

  "Sorry," she says, "you don't need to, it was just a."

  I reach out, my hand on her arm, stopping her dead.

  "I can see the attraction of the Irish countryside must be very strong for you to want to give up the bright lights of the city," I tell her dryly and then immediately blush when I realise that could have sounded as if I meant me.

  Oh, Christ.

  Leigh is smiling, looking up at me through her long eyelashes, her head still bent, in that reserved way she has.

  "Yeah, you know," she says grinning, happy to turn what should be a serious moment into far less confusing banter, "the Tesco here is far superior to the one in Rathmines."

  "Idiot," I tell her, laughing, relieved too that we aren't going to turn this into a big deal.

  We talk for a few minutes and I appraise Leigh with new eyes, see the strength in her, that her eyes no longer slide past me at the end of each sentence. That her body is stronger too, no longer rail thin and blasted of all unnecessary bulk, but real and more solid now and when she smiles and it reaches her eyes.

  I don't have any words or anything interesting to talk about now, long out of practice, it so rare now that I talk to anyone of anything other than the weather or their ailments now. Leigh talks easily of a few small things, funny stories that have me laughing and wanting her to stay with me and keep this feeling but I have a child to pick up from creche.

  We promise to catch up with each other and exchange numbers, me pretending that I don't already have hers from Mam. I resolutely tell myself that I won't text her until after I've put Em to bed, but I barely have Em in the door when I think of some farcical reason to message her, only when I take out my phone I find that she has messaged me already, a full half hour ago, minutes after I left her side.

  I smile to myself and remember how nice is it is that Leigh could not care less about how not waiting to text someone might look. We text back and forth for hours and we finally agree to meet at the pub on Thursday after she and I have finished for the day.

  I'm nervous and excited all day long, the day dragging beyond belief and I get to the pub a few minutes early and find her already there, waiting for me.

  We don't hug because I am not quite confident enough to and she never was able to initiate that kind of thing but we are both smiling at each other in a way that reminds me how well I know her.

  I discover that Leigh is fun to drink with, talking animatedly of this and that as I watch in surprise. She doesn't like the taste of wine, having never spent her formative adult years learning to enjoy it, so she drinks beer and I do too.

  She talks of real things, of herself now too and I can see how likeable she is. In Sydney her attention made me like myself, brought me back from a place where deep down I believed that I was worthless.

  But now I see that Leigh is fun, that you can't stop her talking when she is really interested in a topic and that I very much like listening to her talk even if sometimes I have no idea about what she is saying. Her thoughts on surgical techniques or whatnot.

  I ask about her house buying plan and she looks awkward.

  "I kind of bought somewhere already," she mumbles studying her empty glass as if there might be something new in there.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  "Where?" I ask her, then with more emphasis, "When?"

  "Yesterday," she says cautiously, "and it's this beautiful old place just out of town."

  She pauses.

  "It’s amazing how cheap real estate is out here," she says reflectively.

  Feck.

  I immediately know where she is talking about, the manor house that has been on the market for over a year, the one that is falling to pieces and yes is beautiful, but also is currently unliveable.

  There is a reason why it was so cheap.

  "Did you look at it before you bought it?" I ask her, remembering the furniture and art buying afternoon.

  "Yes," she says defensively, then, "well, the guy who did the inspection report shot a video and I drove past it too."

  She sees the look on my face.

  "A couple of times," she adds with a small smile.

  She smiles wider.

  "Daniel thought it was a good buy, I showed him on the internet and we drove past it a few weeks ago," she says pointedly. "Anyway, it's nice to have a project, there is a builder that I know in Cork who is going to take the work on."

  "And what are you planning on doing with an eight-bedroom house when it's done?" I ask her dryly.

  Leigh shrugs.

  "I have some ideas," she says with a grin and then looks up at me, through her eyelashes, shyly, "I thought maybe you'd have some advice."

  Jesus, she makes my heart melt.

  Which is lucky for her because if having a luxury sports car parked in Mam's driveway generated a little gossip before, the news that a toff nosed Londoner surgeon has bought the old manor house on the hill and is spending hundreds of thousands of euros doing it up spreads like wildfire and it is all that anyone can talk of at the clinic. Especially now that it has become common knowledge that she is linked somehow with my family.

  There is hardly a day that goes past where one patient or another doesn't ask some curious question about what she is doing here, what she is going to do, what she does.

  It isn't until an older woman, about my mother's age says to me that she thinks her daughter who lives in Dublin would be a perfect match for that good-looking doctor and do I think I could set them up, that I start to very firmly shutdown any talk about Leigh in the clinic.

  26) Talk of the village

  A week passes and I'm by Mam's house I see that I'm not the only Cronin sibling who is giving Leigh advice on her house. T
hat Leigh has built a to-scale plan of her house in lego and Daniel is obsessed by it, building his own version and making increasingly inspired additions to it.

  I make a face at Mam and she mouths at me, "ask your brother about it."

  I make more of a face. You are kidding right?

  Mam raises an eyebrow, annoyed.

  Fine.

  "So, Daniel, what's happening here?" I ask him in the same voice I use with Em.

  Mam glares at me, but I hardly see why, Em is far more capable than Daniel is. I shrug and turn back to Daniel pointedly.

  Daniel still has his back to me and when he doesn't turn around, I wait a moment before looking back at Mam. See?

  "It is an 1833 manor house," Daniel says and I turn in surprise and see that he has moved to the table and is partially facing me, even if he isn't looking at me.

  "It was originally a coach house from 1334," he says, "when it was rebuilt they kept some of the parts."

  I turn slowly to look at Mam, my eyes wide, my heart pounding at this entirely unexpected event.

  She smiles at me, looking proud and sad and happy all at once.

  So am I. I can feel tears pricking the corner of my eyes as Daniel proceeds to tell the room at large of the Tudor style and the gabled windows and the central heating, all in his monotone voice.

  When he is finished I stare at him with fresh eyes and a guilty heart.

  The knowledge that I've never even once had a conversation with Daniel or a hug from him and that sometimes I've hated him for that more than anything, but there is a heavier weight on my heart that I've also never once sat down with him and shared an activity either and I wonder if he should hate me for that.

  That I know deep down inside if he had been a patient of mine and not my brother then I would have tried to understand him.

  But I didn't and I never thought to help him, just that he was an inconvenience to my life.

  Leigh has been here for not even six months and in that time, she has made more progress than I have in the rest of his life, more progress in just one day.

  That not just Daniel has changed, but Mam too and I'm reminded of the day that Diarmuid died and the things that I told her. That I didn't need her, that I needed help with my mother and my brother.

  That Leigh would never presume to offer me money but my words gave her an excuse to offer support in other ways.

  I look around the room, that is bright and cheery and smells of the lightest scent of the fresh jonquils on the table and at Daniel in his perfectly ironed khakis and polo shirt, being Wednesday it is his red one, Mam in a neat dress with a cup of tea and a book in her hand and I can't quite take in the change from a few months ago, this darkened, cluttered house, reeking of smoke.

  I realise that Mam hasn't even gone out for a cigarette yet and whilst I am sure she hasn't quit she seems to have cut down. That somehow, she has learned the mystery of dealing with Daniel, she and Leigh both and I have been too wrapped up in my own problems to care.

  She walks me out when I leave and I ask her whilst we stand in the cool night air, how she knows now what to do.

  Mam smiles at me.

  "Ask Leigh," she says amused, knowing something I don't. "You are young, you'll get over the shock."

  I press her for more detail but she just smiles cryptically.

  So, the following Thursday I ask Leigh what Mam was talking about.

  Leigh stares at me for a long moment before looking away, embarrassed for some reason.

  "Oh god," she says and lets out a long breath. "Your mother actually asked you to ask me about that?"

  "Yes," I tell her feeling my curiosity rising, "why?"

  "I was kind of annoyed that day," Leigh says heavily, biting her bottom lip and I see that she isn't embarrassed, she is ashamed.

  "So?" I ask, if anything far more curious now.

  "So, I acted like an arsehole," she says flatly, clearly not want to discuss this.

  "You aren't ever an arsehole," I tell her in surprise.

  "I'm being an arsehole now," she says pointedly, grinning, her mood broken.

  "And the day we first met," she reminds me, "I was a massive arsehole."

  I make a face.

  "I was the one who told you my whole life story without any prompting at all, because I was nervous," I remind her.

  Leigh looks at me incredulously.

  "You are kidding," she says, "I wasn't even able to talk to you at all and then I made fun of you."

  I narrow my eyes at her.

  "This is true," I tell her, "god knows why I put up with you at all, you made a terrible first impression."

  Leigh grins at me.

  "See," she says.

  "So, Mam annoyed you," I remind her.

  "I didn't say that," she says.

  "You didn't need to," I tell her.

  "Right," she says, agreeing.

  "And," I prompt.

  "I explained to her that she what she was doing wasn't helping Daniel at all," Leigh says, the look on her face telling me that she wasn't doing a very good job of remaining calm at this point.

  "And," I ask impatiently.

  "She didn't get it, so I showed her why Daniel was losing his shit," she says.

  "So, show me," I tell her.

  Leigh makes a face. I don't want to.

  "Please?" I ask her with a smile.

  "Maybe later?" she asks hoping I'll just forget about it.

  "Or now?" I ask her brightly.

  She sighs and I can see that she is going to give in.

  "Yes?" I ask her.

  "Fine," she says begrudgingly.

  She drains the last half-inch of her beer and puts the empty glass resolutely down on the table.

  "Come on then," she says, getting up.

  I follow her, wondering now what kind of demonstration this is.

  "Where are we going?" I ask her as we exit the pub and start up the road.

  "I park at your Mam's house," she tells me leaving me completely unenlightened.

  I'm reminded of the days that I would casually take her hand in a circumstance like this but we don't, walking the few blocks to Mam's house side by side a half foot of air between us, as solid as the hedgerow next to us.

  Leigh is silent, thinking.

  "You know," Leigh says eventually, "I never did say I was sorry for the day we met or any of the other times I was an arsehole."

  She looks across at me.

  "I am sorry," she says, heartfelt.

  I stare at her.

  "There isn't anything to apologise for," I tell her in surprise.

  Leigh frowns at me, very serious in that way she has of being so intent on a subject as to add gravity.

  "I do," she says, "even more so if you can't see it."

  "Should I apologise for that night I got drunk and you left surgery to come and look after me?" I ask her gently.

  "No," she says immediately and then opens her mouth again clearly wanting to expand on why she needs to apologise and I do not.

  "No," I tell her firmly, "because we are friends."

  She smiles at me, both happy and somehow sad at once.

  "Do you want to drive?" she asks, hand in her pocket as we walk up the driveway.

  She sees my unconscious grin, smiles back and tosses me the keys.

  "Where are we going?" I ask her curiously.

  "Wherever you want," she says cryptically, "I'm not going to do this in your Mam's driveway again."

  I raise an eyebrow.

  "It made the neighbours far too curious last time," she says and I withhold the need to tell her that just the car by itself makes the neighbours curious.

  I'm relieved that any effect of the one beer has worn off on our short walk as I slide into the driver’s seat.

  "It's a little less ostentatious," I tell her critically as I eye the dashboard.

  Leigh grins at me. "Yeah, I've been thinking about buying a lambo instead," she says.

  I roll my e
yes at her, hardly even able to imagine the gossip that would raise in the village.