Meet Me In Manhattan

by Claudia Carroll

  ‘Sure,’ nods Mary-Clare, clearly seeing herself as the head girl/instigator of all this.

  ‘OK, we know that you tracked this guy down through geotagging and from his computer’s IP address.’

  ‘That’s right!’

  ‘Which is when you discovered …’

  ‘That he lived right here in the greatest city on earth,’ says Natalie, with a diplomatic wave towards the fake Manhattan skyline on the studio set behind her.

  ‘So we’re up to speed on the fact that your thirty-something airline pilot was in fact a sixteen-year-old schoolkid called Harry McGillis!’ says the presenter, while Kelly claps her hands like an overexcitable dolphin in the background.

  ‘But why don’t you fill me in on what happened when you ladies actually got to his apartment to confront him?’

  I’ve told the truth to Joy. I’ve told the truth and nothing but to everyone I work for, which has cost me one job and is doubtless about to cost me another. But there’s one person I can’t and won’t come clean with. Because how could I possibly?

  Family is family and, right now, the very last thing the McGillis family need is for me to dump all my troubles on them. Not when they’re dealing with so much on a daily basis, with all their dirty linen being aired out in public, for the whole world to snigger at.

  And I know in my heart that this is one of those flash-in-the-pan stories that burns brightly, dominates airwaves for a while, then just as quickly disappears, but still. When you’re caught in the eye of the storm as Mike, Dorothy and Harry are right now, I’ll bet it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table that night, all alone in the apartment as Joy’s gone over to Krzysztof’s to help him demolish the last of the plum pudding and mince pies. And by now I swear YouTube is almost like the ‘go-to’ default page on my web browser; ever since Joy forced me to check it out with her earlier, I hardly think there’s been ten minutes where I haven’t been glued to the shagging thing.

  The bad news is that it’s escalated. Oh dear God, this story has shot up to the stratosphere by now. If I’d thought a TV appearance on NY1 was bad enough, it seems that was nothing more than the warm-up act.

  To date, the ‘Catfish Ladies’, as the media have now adoringly labelled them, have made guest appearances on The Midday News Show on ABC, Live From the Rockefeller on NBC, and that’s not counting all the column inches – no, scrap that – all the acres of print media that the three of them have dominated over the past forty-eight hours. I break out into a cold, clammy sweat just scrolling down through the Google search page in front of me.

  Now I know it’s the deadest news week in the entire calendar. Aside from the recent snowstorms, news stations are practically clawing under rocks to try to unearth something newsworthy to report. But sweet Baby Jesus and the orphans, did I for one minute think this whole catfish story would turn into such a media phenomenon?

  Practically every New York newspaper I click onto, there they are; Mary-Clare’s round, beaming face, proudly flanked by her loyal cohorts: a euphoric Kelly and a tightly determined-looking Natalie, their three images imprinted onto the back of my eyelids by now. Out of nowhere, I find myself frantically praying for some class of a political crisis or global meltdown to come along in the next twenty-four hours, if nothing else but to elbow this bloody story back to the nether regions of the Internet, where it belongs. A cheating politician maybe. Or some government scandal that’s got out of hand. Anything to deflect attention away from this, till it all blows over.

  Worst part of it all is that somehow the media have got hold of a class photo of Harry by now. One of those horrendous black-and-white yearbook jobs where the poor kid looks even younger than his years and at such a painfully awkward growth stage that you’d think anyone with half a conscience would cut him some slack, but no such luck.

  Instead, image after image of him has been plastered on just about every supermarket tabloid from the National Enquirer to the US Star. With banner headlines that are enough to make my blood run cold: ‘MY CATFISH HELL!’ one screams in block capitals. ‘KING OF THE CATFISH IS JUST 16!’ yells another. That particular beaut backed up with an ‘in-depth report’, if you could call it that, packed with tales told out of school from Harry’s supposed ‘friends’ from his class.

  Jesus. Just when I think it can’t get worse.

  Unable to take much more of this, I text Mike asking if he’s free to talk, saying I’ll Skype him if he’s around. He texts back to say, yes, he can talk for a bit, and two minutes later up he pops on my computer screen. He looks tired, worn down by all the intense drama he’s caught up in; exhausted black rings are lining his eyes and there’s none of that light-heartedness about him now, which I think gets to me more than anything else possibly could.

  ‘Hey there,’ he says simply. ‘It’s good to see you. Even if it is on the other side of a computer screen.’

  ‘You too,’ I tell him. ‘So … ermm … well, I have to know … how are you all coping?’

  He rolls his eyes and ruffles his hair in a mannerism that suddenly takes me back to when I first met him, which seems another age ago now.

  ‘This is a ridiculous stupid question, but I take it you’ve seen the latest coverage?’ he says.

  ‘As much as I can bear to. I still can’t get my head around it though. Oh Mike, the sheer amount of column inches those women are garnering for themselves, it’s unbelievable …’ I break off here a bit, unable to refer to them as the Catfish Ladies, like everyone else is. In fact, in my mind’s eye now, the three of them might as well have morphed into the three witches in Macbeth.

  ‘Well, if nothing else, I can certainly solve that particular mystery for you,’ says Mike. ‘It seems that one of them, Natalie, you know, the thin, wiry one who always keeps a briefcase clutched to her—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, apparently her sister runs a PR company and it seems she’s the one who’s been spearheading this whole press onslaught. Night-time chat shows I’m afraid are only a matter of time. We’re braced for it, though as you can imagine, we’re not looking forward to it. And I’ve had to hire a PR consultant myself, just to try to contain the damage so hopefully this can blow over sooner rather than later.’

  ‘And what about Dorothy? And Harry himself? How are they both holding up?’

  ‘Oh God where do I begin?’ he says, slumping forward now so that all I want to do is rub my hands up against the screen, reach through it and touch him. ‘Well, let me put it this way. We’ve certainly had happier Christmases, that’s for certain.’

  My heart is breaking for them. What Harry did was terrible, but he doesn’t deserve this.

  ‘There’s even some press right outside the apartment now,’ he goes on and I wince, just visualizing the scene. ‘They’ve scant interest in either me or Mom, which is a small mercy, but Harry is virtually a prisoner in his own home right now. He’s prepared to swear that ever since you first walked into our lives, he got such a fright that he broke off all contact with these women immediately. And the thing is, I believe him. He’d been shocked into dropping his catfish act; he’d learned his lesson, and by God, it’ll never happen again. But no one seems to care that it’s all over now. All our Catfish Ladies seem to want is their pound of flesh and they’re not prepared to stop at anything till they get it.’

  ‘Oh Mike … I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Worst part is, I keep waiting on all this to land. Every morning since you left, I think, well that’s it then. This has to be rock bottom. But it never is. Turns out there’s always still further to fall and it seems we still aren’t even close to the bottom yet.’

  We talk on, Mike spilling it all out for me while I mostly just listen.

  ‘Thing is, Holly, I understand their anger, and believe me, Harry has apologized till he’s blue in the face. But it seems that’s not enough for them. Kelly, the blonde one, I think has her sights set on a career in TV so she�
�s determined to see this one through to the final curtain. And Mary-Clare, the one who instigated it all? It seems she’s after a book deal about all this, or at the very least a newspaper column about her online blog, so she’s not prepared to drop this anytime soon. Whole careers have been launched on considerably less in this country, and it seems that’s their ultimate goal here.’

  ‘Mike, I really am so sorry.’

  A long pause as he rubs his eyes exhaustedly.

  ‘And … well, there’s one other thing I need to ask you,’ he eventually says.

  ‘Of course. Anything.’

  ‘Jesus, Holly,’ he says, more softly now, more like himself. ‘You’ve had so much to put up with. Ever since your last night in New York, you’ve had to listen to me and my family going on about this ad nauseam, when none of it was your fault, and when you’d been so good to us in letting the whole story slide. Right now I don’t blame you if you’re sitting there in Dublin cursing the very name McGillis.’

  I can’t think of a single thing to say, so he keeps on talking.

  ‘But here’s one thing that’s been troubling me,’ he says. ‘You promised to shelve the story with your radio and TV show, but suppose your producers get wind of it anyway? This is viral now and we all know where that leads to. Last thing I’d want is for you to end up in even more trouble, just on account of me and my cursed family.’

  ‘Then let me at least set your mind to rest on that score,’ I tell him firmly. ‘Because you don’t have to worry about a thing. Everything here is just fine.’

  ‘You mean, with your job and everything?’

  ‘Everything is just great,’ I repeat, surprising myself at how easily the lie trips off my tongue. ‘So you just put that one right out of your head and concentrate on getting through this. Oh, and just remember what Winston Churchill said.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘When you’re going through hell, keep going.’

  It’s only when we’ve ended the call that I realize Joy’s come in behind me without my having heard her. How much of the last bit of our chat she’s overheard, I couldn’t say, all I know is that she’s standing in front of me now, arms folded, not looking best pleased, to put it mildly.

  ‘So everything’s absolutely fine here then, is it?’ she frowns down at me. ‘All hunky-dory in work? Nothing at all for Mike to worry about?’

  ‘Joy please, not now …’ I groan.

  ‘You didn’t tell him that your loyalty just cost you a job? Pretty big sacrifice to make for people you barely know!’

  ‘Look, that family are going through the mill right now. They can’t even leave their apartment without being photographed! They’re like prisoners in their own home and Harry’s whole life is being paraded and vilified across TV shows and news stands, the whole works. What kind of a person would add to all their worries right now? Would even want to? There’s a time to tell Mike, but believe me, this isn’t it.’

  I didn’t quite catch what Joy muttered under her breath as she went back into the kitchen. But it sounded scarily like, ‘Worse fecking eejit, you.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  That night, after staring at the clock on my bedside table for exactly forty-seven minutes, I eventually doze off into a troubled, fretful sleep. Now I don’t know whether it’s all the bloody drama of the past twenty-four hours, or just the time of year. Or maybe the fact that I was so blissfully happy and distracted back in New York that I effectively managed to postpone dealing with the inevitable horrors till now.

  But here we go again, wouldn’t you know it, the Ghost of Christmases Past nightmare part three comes back to keep me tossing, turning and pinned to the sheets all night. Same as it does every other year: I could set my watch by it.

  25th December, 2012

  It had been such a beautiful day too; icy-cold of course, but sunny and crisp. Bad things weren’t supposed to happen on days like this. They just weren’t, it didn’t seem right.

  Not long before Christmas, mum going for her routine mammogram at St Vincent’s hospital, where she worked. She’d had a letter in the post asking her to arrange an appointment, and I remember her smiling at me when she caught me looking a bit concerned.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Holly! Every woman my age has to get herself properly checked out. And they do dozens of these every day! Besides, a mammogram takes no time at all, an hour, tops. Tell you what, why don’t you come to the hospital with me, let’s get this over and done with, then we could hit town and start on a bit of Christmas shopping?’

  So buoyed along by her brimming confidence, I went along to St Vincent’s with her and sat in the packed waiting room till her name was called out. I remember giving her a comforting squeeze on her arm and her winking back at me.

  ‘Be back before you know it, love!’ she said in that quiet, gentle voice of hers.

  First warning sign something was up? The waiting room had been packed out with women all aged around fifty plus, just like Mum, but each and every one of them was in and out in less than an hour or so.

  Not Mum though. Instead, she and I were asked to wait to ‘have a chat’ about her results. The senior radiologist on duty said it was ‘probably best to do a biopsy here and now, just in case’. Then that dreaded phrase that I came to hate more than anything on earth.

  ‘We’re sure this is absolutely nothing to worry about!’ Which of course only made me worry even more.

  Just weeks before Christmas, we had Mum’s first scary diagnosis, followed by immediate surgery.

  ‘Just a lumpectomy,’ I was told, and yet again came the killer phrase. ‘Absolutely nothing for you to worry about, we do fifty of these a week.’

  Nothing to worry about? Ha! Four intensive weeks of daily radiation treatment followed, with Mum getting weaker, thinner, paler and sicker by the day. She and I spent that Christmas at home, while she recovered from surgery, before her treatment proper began on New Year’s Day. I remember misguidedly thinking that the New Year could only take a turn for the better from here on in.

  Worst eejit me.

  Months passing, the treatment eventually coming to an end and then a miracle: Mum gradually getting stronger, looker better, slowly regaining her hair and her energy, feeling a whole lot more like herself. We figured the worst was behind us now. She’d had six intensive rounds of chemo, we figured, surely that must have zapped everything stone dead?

  ‘You can stop all your worrying now, Holly,’ she wisely said to me. ‘Remember, everyone gets something in this life and it seems this is my thing, so I’ll just deal with it, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve had my scare and nothing could possibly be as bad again.’

  Scans, scans and more scans followed, ‘just to be sure there’s nothing there that shouldn’t be’. Then barely eighteen months after her initial diagnosis, during another routine scan, they found something. Lymph nodes they were worried about now, so of course this opened up a whole new plethora of biopsies and consultants, and worry.

  More waiting, and I swear, Mum and I used to say the waiting was the most terrifying part of all. The two of us, jollying each other along in yet another consultant’s waiting room by slagging off pap shots of celebs caught with zits and no make-up in Heat magazine. If I hadn’t known what the term gallows humour really meant before then, I certainly did afterwards.

  Then the pair of us being steered into what we’d come to label the ‘bad news’ room.

  Mum’s knuckles turning white, while it was all I could do not to burst into tears, the frightened, gulpy kind that I never allowed myself. Metastatic cancer this time, we were told. But not entirely unexpected, her oncologist said, for someone at your stage and grade. Mum was amazing and calmly knew all the right questions to ask, all the sensible ones that went clean out of my head.

  Yet more surgery.

  That year, Mum was in hospital more often than she was home. I swear, I’d got so pally with the nurses on her ward, one of them even invited me to her weddin
g. Hospital vending-machine food was all I survived on back then, Toffee Crisps and Tayto washed down with gallons of watery, lukewarm canteen coffee.

  More chemo. Because this was aggressive now and needed to be treated aggressively, we were told. Mum’s skin turning to the exact colour of urine. Platitudes all around me. ‘She’ll be fine!’ ‘She’s bound to feel rotten for a while, given everything her poor body has been through, but wait till you see, she’ll bounce back!’

  But she didn’t.

  And I learned one of life’s hardest lessons.

  When the medical professionals were actually pumping her full of chemo and radiation, much and all as I hated it, it was infinitely better than the cruel alternative, which three frighteningly truncated years later we eventually faced into.

  The dreaded words. ‘We’re so sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do.’ The hospice was mentioned, but as her next of kin, I absolutely point-blank refused. If anything happens to my mother, I told the whole lot of them, it’s going to happen peacefully, at home and in her own bed.

  Home.

  Mrs McKay, our next-door neighbour, traipsing in and out of the house, bless her, with trays of soup and home-made ham sandwiches. Like any of us had an appetite. It was kind of her though and a much-appreciated gesture, but to this day, mind association means even the smell of ham is enough to turn my stomach.

  Our cousins from Cork calling both my mobile and the house phone so often that I gave up even answering the phone after a while. Their constant ringing was disturbing Mum, and besides, I knew right well what they wanted to know. The subtext was there every time I spoke to my cousin Moira, unspoken though it was.

  Just how serious is she now? Bad enough that I have to take the train to Dublin to see her? And how much longer is she expected to last: hours, days, weeks? Because if there’s a funeral, I’ve got small kids and can’t be expected to drop everything at the drop of a hat, especially over Christmas. I need to know!