by Sienna Blake
“I’ve moved on,” I said darkly, as I pulled her hands from my body. “Why else do you think I didn’t go to the grave?” I shouldered past her and opened a random drawer in the toolbox.
“Darren, don’t do this,” Kayleigh warned, sadness tinging her voice. Her hand reached out for me.
I brushed it off and then glared at her over my shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be with Eoin right now?”
Kayleigh froze, her hand suspended in the heavy, unmoving space between the two of us.
“You’re with him, right?” I spat venom with each word. “What kind of girlfriend isn’t with her boyfriend when he’s grieving?”
Kayleigh’s hand dropped limply to her side, her cheeks reddening as if I’d slapped her with each violent word.
Her voice was low when she next spoke. “You can try to mask your pain in anger and coldness and rudeness, but I see you, Darren,” she hissed. “I see you.”
Rage so hot and so fast that I could barely stand still flooded my veins as Kayleigh laid her coat over her arm and turned to leave.
“Why don’t you go heal Eoin’s pain, Kayleigh?” I shouted after her. “He’s the one you’re fucking, after all.”
Kayleigh did not turn back to face me when she spoke. “I’ve never had sex with Eoin.”
I stood against the toolbox and watched the darkness coming for me as the door lowered noisily behind her after she left. The inky black covered my grease-stained boots first, then my dirty jeans, then my black t-shirt. I sucked in one last gulp of air as if the darkness I was plunged into was bone-chilling black water I couldn’t escape.
And I drowned in it.
Kayleigh
I figured maybe a night or two of wall-shaking music, eardrum shattering karaoke, and a brain-piercing headache might drown out any and every thought of Darren from my mind.
Turns out the thoughts of him were louder.
After I fought with Darren in his shop, I texted Aubrey and asked if I could pick up a shift or two at The Jar for some extra cash; I didn’t bother telling her right away that by “extra cash” I meant rent and food costs and utilities and anything else I needed to stay alive, because I wasn’t going to go back to work with Darren.
Thankfully Aubrey didn’t ask any questions and said yes right away. The roughest part of the whole process was listening to Candace scream for three minutes straight when I told her I’d be working with her that night.
We walked over to The Jar together for our shift. With her normal exuberance, Candace showed me where the kegs were located in case they needed replacing during the night, how to load up dirty pint glasses into the dishwasher, and who to call in case someone got just a smidge too rowdy. I nodded along politely and tried to show enthusiasm for what she was showing me, but truthfully, it was nothing new.
If you’ve worked in one bar, you’ve worked in every bar.
Ten minutes into the shift, I’d learned everything there was to learn, and there were still seven hours and fifty minutes left. At least the single clock on the wall was covered with a splatter of neon silly string so I wouldn’t be tempted to check the time every thirty seconds or so.
“Are you just loving it?” Candace shouted over the music that rattled the floors beneath us after returning from the back with a clean rack of pint glasses. “Isn’t it just the best job in the world, Kay?”
I started to help her stack up the glasses and nodded. “Yeah, it’s alright craic, I guess.”
It was the fifth rack of pint glasses we’d unloaded that night, and we were only halfway through at that point.
“Way better than that dingy, dirty garage, right?” Candace nudged me with a wink for good measure. Her tactics in trying to convince me to work here full-time weren’t exactly subtle. But then again, Candace didn’t exactly do subtle. Ever.
“Emhmm,” I managed to eke out half-heartedly without pointing out the obvious fact that the soles of both of our pairs of sneakers were sticky with spilled liquor and that the bar top was coated in a layer of cheese and onion Tayto crisp crumbs.
“I mean, here you have great music.” Candace waved her arm in the air above her head to the lively rhythm of Beoga’s contemporary trad hit, “Dolan’s 6am”, as she poured a Guinness for a customer. “Is music even allowed in that place? Or do you have to whisper like it’s a boring old library?”
“What?” I shouted over at her while running another customer’s card.
“Don’t you like the music here?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
Really, I found myself missing the silence of the shop. When it was silent I could hear Darren’s calm, steady voice next to me under the hood as he showed me how to change something or fix something. When it was silent I could catch a little tune he hummed every once in a while, probably without realising. Then again when it was silent, I could hear my heart pounding out the letters of his name again and again and again.
“Plus, you’re making people happy here.” Candace pointed to a group of girls laughing as they attempted to Irish dance in heels.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Candace that I wasn’t quite sure they were going to be so happy tomorrow morning.
“It’s great here,” I told her, forcing a smile. “I like it, I really do.”
Candace had to stretch up to sling her arm around my shoulders. She grinned up at me between a curtain of raven curls. “And there really is no better co-worker than me, isn’t that the goddamn truth, amiga?”
I laughed and put my arm around her as well. “You’re alright, I guess.”
“Alright?” Candace leaned back and stared at me with her jaw dropped in mock horror. “Alright?”
I grinned and pulled her back close to me. “You’re the most wonderful, most beautiful, most funny, most amazing co-worker ever, Candace.”
Candace winked and patted my butt. “That’s right.”
I chuckled, shaking my head as I started an order for two vodka tonics with lemons.
“So you’ll leave that grumpy hermit and come have the best job here with the most wonderful, most beautiful, most funny, most amazing co-worker ever, right?” Candace asked while counting out change. When I didn’t answer, she elbowed me again in the side. “Think about it, okay?” she said with a smile. “I’m going to go get more pint glasses.”
She disappeared into the crowd on her way to the kitchen as I stood before a sea of expectant, bleary-eyed faces. In that moment, I wanted to pull up a hood and watch them all disappear. I wanted to replace the bottles of whiskey with cylinders, the keg taps with engine valves, the dishrag soaked with Jägermeister with an old torn t-shirt stained with oil and grease. I wanted the music to die and the voices to all fade but one.
The one who wasn’t here.
The one who I left.
The one who pushed me away.
“Hey, can we get a pint or something?” a college-age kid shouted at me from the end of the bar.
“Yeah, in a sec,” I replied. “We’re out of pint glasses.”
Candace returned hidden by a rack of freshly cleaned pint glasses. “Never fear, fellas, we have pint glasses!” she announced to a roar of cheers and applause. “We’ll always have pint glasses and we’ll always have beer!”
Candace beamed when the man she handed the overflowing beer to leaned across the bar and planted a wet kiss on her candied-apple cheek.
“Now, what’s your name, cutie?” Candace purred after playfully grabbing his chin.
I smiled and left her to her new “friend” to serve the throngs of parched patrons farther down the bar. It was all the same for the rest of the night: take order, pour drink, tap card, avoid getting hit on, repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
At the end of the night with eyes half closed, I pushed a mop across the beer-soaked, broad wooden planks back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Candace was right: there would always be more pint glasses. Dirty pint glasses, clean pint glasses, al
most-empty, half-full, lipstick-stained pint glasses. There would always be beer. Ale, red ale, stout, larger, IPA. Any kind of beer you could think of, we’d have it. There would always be people. There would always be laughter and the craic, music and more craic, and more pint glasses to fill with beer.
But there wouldn’t be him.
“So,” Candace drew the word out long and slow in her thick Brazilian accent as she counted cash for the end of the night at the register behind the bar, “will you be back tomorrow night, my darling amiga?”
I glanced over at her from where I stood with the mop in the centre of the sticky floor.
There wouldn’t be him.
“Umm…”
“Não, não, não.”
Coins clattered the ground as Candace ran to me, swept my hands up into hers and clutched them dramatically against her chest. “Don’t break my heart like this, Kayleigh,” she moaned. “Please, please, please.”
There wouldn’t be him.
Maybe that was for the best. The best for both of us.
I squeezed Candace’s hands and smiled. “Count me in.”
I barely had time to pull my hands from hers and slap them over my ears before my undyingly passionate roommate leaned her head back and gave half of Dublin a very unwelcome 1:30 a.m. wake-up call.
I wish I could have said I felt even an ounce of her enthusiasm. Instead I was silent.
Silent yet again.
Darren
I’d driven past the graveyard where my twin brother lay more times than I could possibly count, but I’d never stopped. Each time the wind would tear the tears from my eyes as I twisted the accelerator on my motorcycle instead of reaching for the brake. My headlight would cut through the fine mist and I’d wonder if it was his tombstone that the harsh yellow beam illuminated amongst the weeds and dying leaves, but I never paused long enough to check. Every time I passed the marbled hills of the dead, my chest ached as if the tether between Jaime and my heart still existed through the veil and I was ripping it apart again and again and again as I drove faster and faster and faster away.
Always away.
Tonight was the first time I stopped. The engine of my motorcycle sputtered and died in the small parking lot at the edge of the wrought iron fence, rusted and claimed by tangles of thorny ivy. I cut out the headlight and felt the cold of the asphalt creep into the soles of my boots. I stuffed my frozen fingers into the pockets of my leather jacket and sat there on the frigid leather seat, watching my breath unfurl like tendrils of a cigarette against the black night. I suddenly craved the burn of nicotine in my lungs. Or whiskey. Or lighter fluid. Anything, please, anything to warm my soul.
My fingers, numb from the drive, twitched toward the key still in the ignition. I wasn’t here for the right reasons. My family came to remember Jaime, to celebrate his life, to feel closer to him. I was here that night because I was selfish. I was here for selfish reasons. I was here because I needed something.
Chewing on the inside of my mouth, I stared out over the hundreds of tombstones dotting the plot of land. I still couldn’t quite believe my brother was one of them. I remembered when we were kids and we would hold our breaths whenever Ma drove past a cemetery. Huffing and puffing, red in the face and clutching at our throats, we’d laugh and laugh once we were finally past, because for us death was an impossibility. It would never be our names carved in marble. It would never be us that a gardener moved grass above with a bored sigh, squinting in the sunlight we no longer saw. We would forever have an empty space after the dash following our birth year.
Turns out the impossible is entirely possible: all it takes is a little bit of ice, a blink of an eye, and a traffic light pole.
I waited for the headlights of a passing car to plunge me back into darkness before swinging my leg stiffly over my motorcycle. It was as if I’d forgotten how to walk as I approached the cemetery fence, my feet stumbling and my knees threatening to buckle. I weaved across the parking lot like I was drunk. Hopping the shoulder-high fence would normally be no problem, but I was sweating and panting by the time I managed to drop down into the wet leaves on the other side.
An inky black hung like a curtain over the graveyard. I didn’t bring a flashlight or my cell phone. Maybe I just forgot. Maybe I was hoping that I would wander around in the dark, tracing the carved names on random gravestones before I gave up, went home, and honestly said I tried to find him. Or maybe it was just too fecking cold to think properly.
I lifted the collar of my coat against the bitter wind as my boots crunched the brittle leaves beneath me. It was the only noise around me save for a passing car now and then, here and gone.
I remembered the burial plot pamphlets on the funeral home director’s desk two days after Jaime died. I remembered not listening to anything the long-faced man was saying as I stared at his pale, bony fingers stretched flat across the desk; I was too busy wondering whose job it was to make those bleedin’ pamphlets with their morbid “selling points”. I remembered Ma asking in a broken voice, “Are there any trees?”
In this graveyard, there were five large oaks. I moved toward the smallest and thinnest—we were poor when Jaime died and I had no doubt that a piece of dirt beneath a fine, stately oak cost more, just like an apartment with a view cost more.
When I finally found Jaime, I walked right past him. I was halfway back to my motorcycle when I sighed, stared up at the shifting grey clouds, and dragged a hand over my weary face. My boots grew heavier and heavier with each step back toward him. I stopped at the edge of the branches, their bare fingers reminding me of the funeral director’s as they swayed above me in the wind. I couldn’t look at his gravestone, as if the grey marble had eyes and I was ashamed to meet them.
“Um, hi,” I mumbled, scratching at the back of my neck.
People always talked aloud to headstones in the movies and I always found it ridiculous. But here I was, speaking aloud to my dead twin brother.
It suddenly didn’t feel so ridiculous.
I cleared my throat and swallowed heavily. “I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to, um, well…to, you know, come see you…or whatever.”
I glanced over, half expecting to see Jaime sitting on his gravestone, arms crossed over his chest, dark eyebrow lifted as he smirked at me. But there was, of course, just the cold marble, the tufts of browned grass, and the flowers from Ma and my brothers now withering.
Turning my face away, I sighed before saying, “Maybe you wouldn’t even want me here, Jay. Maybe you’re rolling over in your grave right now.”
I chuckled, because I knew goddamn well that Jaime would have chuckled, too. But as my soft laughter died in the still graveyard, I was left feeling only colder and terribly alone.
“We didn’t exactly end things on good terms, now did we?” I asked my brother while staring at a random lopsided Celtic cross half buried by tall, untrimmed grasses. “I suppose I have a knack for making a mess of things, don’t I?”
How I wished I could take back the things I said the night I left. How I wished I had looked back one last time before peeling out of the driveway. How I wished I had stayed.
These were things I couldn’t say aloud. These were things I needed most to say aloud. But these were the things locked away in my stony heart, harder than the ice-cold marble with Jaime’s name less than ten feet away.
“I, um, I came here because there was nowhere else to go,” I said, my voice half carried away by the wind.
Not that it mattered how loud I spoke. I could scream at the top of my lungs and there was no chance in hell of Jaime ever, ever hearing me. Never again.
“I guess that hasn’t changed, has it?” I said as guilt again flooded my tight chest. “I’m still a selfish asshole with a penchant for making horrible, devastating decisions.”
Again I glanced over my shoulder, and I could almost see Jaime shrugging. “You said it,” he’d say. “Not me.”
A tiny grin tugged at my lips as I imagined him
huffing and patting the space next to him on the gravestone. “What’s her name, Daz?”
I hesitated for a moment and then turned around so I was facing Jaime’s gravestone. At first it was too much: face-to-face with the empty reality of the stone. That Jaime was nothing more than a lifeless body rotting beneath the frozen earth. I squeezed my eyes shut so I couldn’t see the truth, the mean, hard truth.
“Her name is Kayleigh,” I said, voice shaking, “and she’s Eoin’s girl.”
It was certainly just the whistle of the wind through the leafless oak limbs, but with my eyes closed I could pretend it was Jaime whistling in disbelief as he leaned back and shook his head. I laughed darkly.
“I guess you understand why you were the only person I could talk to about this.”
I dared to peek one eye open, and Jaime was smiling. “No shit, dumbass.”
I opened the other. “I tried my hardest not to fall for her,” I explained, more earnestly than I had expected. “Jay, you have no idea how fecking hard I tried.”
The wind through the naked limbs was my brother’s only response. I dragged my hand through my hair and sighed.
“It just feels like everything I tried only ended up shoving us closer and closer together,” I continued, moving so I stood directly beside Jaime’s gravestone. “It feels like I can’t avoid colliding with her.”
It feels like I don’t want to…
My fingertips skimmed the cold marble of my brother’s tombstone as gently as a falling leaf, but the sensation struck my chest like a ton of bricks. Sinking to my knees in the damp grass, I gasped for air as emotions I’d shoved down for years filled my throat. I pressed my palm against my brother’s etched name and leaned forward to rest my forehead against the year that was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I sobbed, unable to do anything more than that as the earth chilled my body and my tears seared my cheeks. I felt like I still had rivers to cry, lakes and seas and oceans to cry, but I found myself suddenly laughing, because I imagined Jaime seeing me now.
“Are you going to tell me about her boobs or should I go ask Eoin?”