The Things We Know Now

by Catherine Dunne

  Suddenly, he’s wary again. He glances towards the door. Ella raises both hands, a gesture of surrender. ‘The door’s open, Leo. You are still free to go.’

  He runs his tongue over his lips which suddenly look cracked and dry. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  He nods. ‘Yeah.’

  She pours them both a glass of water. And then she waits.

  Leo talks, at last, his long body leaning back into the armchair, the restless movement of his foot finally stilled. Ella learns that he’s the middle of three boys, that he lives on a farm some thirty kilometres away, that he wants to be a footballer. And that his family moved from the city ten months ago, his father inheriting land from an uncle.

  ‘And how do you like country living?’ Ella asks, smiling. She doesn’t know how long she can keep this going, this even, bland, counsellor talk. Part of her wants to leap to her feet and grab this young man by the throat. She wants to shake the truth out of him.

  ‘I hate it,’ he says. ‘I hate the smells an’ the shit an’ the way that I have to get a lift everywhere. It’s like bein’ a prisoner. I don’t know why we had to come here.’ His face is suddenly contorted with anger.

  She decided to shift things up a gear. ‘What about school?’ she asks. ‘Has it been easy enough to settle?’

  Leo glares at her. His foot starts its restless jerking again. ‘I don’t want to talk about school,’ he says. She notices that his hostility has returned, redoubled. It’s like a cloud around him, red and ragged at the edges.

  ‘Okay, that’s fine, Leo. We can come back to it, when you feel like it. If you feel like it,’ she adds, seeing his expression. His rage is so close to the surface again that she knows he will not be able to contain it for too much longer.

  She leans forward in her seat now, looks him directly in the eye. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s happened, Leo? Why don’t you tell me what has brought you here?’

  And suddenly, everything changes.

  The boy looks at her, his face a ghastly white, shading abruptly to green. She thinks he is going to be sick. ‘Breathe,’ she says. ‘Take five deep breaths, one after the other, slowly, slowly. And don’t try to talk. It’s okay, Leo, you’re safe.’

  She doesn’t move from her chair. She waits, watches as the boy struggles with something: watches as, finally, he breaks.

  ‘It’s not okay,’ he sobs. ‘It’ll never be okay.’ He takes three rasping breaths, hiccups, coughs. Ella hands him the box of tissues. Still she says nothing. Finally, he quietens. She pours him another glass of water and one for herself.

  ‘What is so wrong that it can never be okay, Leo? Why don’t you tell me?’

  He looks at her, two spots of livid colour are high on his cheekbones now. ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he says, balling up the damp tissues in his hands. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’ He begins to shred the flimsy white paper, pushing the tiny pieces back again into the sodden mass that lies between his palms.

  ‘You didn’t know what to do about what?’ Ella waits, wanting him to explain, wanting to hear aloud whatever words have been choking him since he crashed into the room.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do about Daniel.’ He will not look at her as he says this. His voice wavers on the last two words. But once they are spoken, he seems to sag back in the seat. His feet in their new and pristine trainers look suddenly vulnerable, as though they have grown too large for him too quickly, making him loose and ungainly, ill at ease in his own body.

  ‘I saw everything that happened,’ he says, suddenly. ‘And I didn’t stop it. I wasn’t able to stop any of it.’ He’s gripping the arms of the chair again. He’s agitated, his foot beginning to pound the floor; the knuckles of both hands are white, small pyramids of bone that look as though they might break through the taut surface at any moment.

  ‘My parents said I have to tell you.’ His eyes fill and he begins to shake, trembling all over. Ella takes her wrap from behind her chair where she’d hung it earlier. She crosses the room and places it gently around Leo’s shoulders. The movement releases something inside her.

  ‘It’s all right, Leo,’ she says. ‘I know you were not to blame. I’m listening. Tell me what you know.’

  He falters at first, and then the words come tumbling. She has to stop him from time to time, to ask him to explain, to clarify, to sort out the tangle of names and places that fall from him, giddy with release. It is as though these words have filled him, fuelled his restless leg, kept him perched as though he would fly out of the room at any moment, darting past her in a single black blur. Without the words, he is now calmer, his face washed of the fear that has clouded it.

  She hears about Jason, about James, about Jeremy. She hears, over and over, what she already knows, what she and Patrick have already learned. She listens as Leo describes the escalation of the assaults over the summer, Jason’s technological expertise, his hatred of Daniel.

  ‘I didn’t like the website,’ Leo told her. ‘The pictures and all that sort of stuff. They made me feel weird. I told Jason I didn’t like it, that it was going too far, but he just told me to fuck off, that I was a wimp.’

  ‘Did he continue?’

  ‘Yeah. All through the summer. He said it was fun and, besides, he had nothin’ else to do. Him and James. But James just did whatever Jason told him.’

  Ella says nothing.

  Leo rummages in his pocket. He pulls out a small, black memory stick. ‘I took a copy of it, of the website. Before Jason closed it down. I don’t know why.’ He shrugs. ‘I just didn’t like it.’ He hands her the memory stick. ‘It’s all true, I swear it.’

  Ella is careful with her reply. She clutches the memory stick, feels the shock of its potent presence in her hand. ‘I believe you, Leo,’ she says. ‘Now, I’m going to have to ask you to listen to what I’ve understood. If I get something wrong, correct me. Otherwise, just listen.’

  He nods, looking exhausted now. ‘Okay.’

  Ella chooses her words carefully, professionally, masking the turmoil that is suddenly boiling and spilling inside her. It is as much as she can do to sit in the chair, to rest her hands lightly on the arms. She is having difficulty coming to terms with the casual, unthinking cruelty that has led to her son’s death. The only way she can continue is to focus on the words that give shape and structure to Leo’s narrative.

  When she finishes, Leo nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘That’s what I saw. An’ what I heard. It’s all true.’

  She leans forward. ‘This is very serious stuff, Leo. And I think you know that. It’s been clear for some time that the police will have to be involved. Are you prepared to tell the Guards what you have just told me?’

  He nods. ‘Yeah. My parents say I have to. And I think it’s right. I mean, right to tell. It wasn’t fair, what they did to him.’

  ‘Thank you, Leo.’

  When she lets him out, a woman probably her own age, is standing by the door of her car. She nods at Ella, and opens the passenger door for her son. She does not say anything, not that night.

  Ella goes back inside and Patrick is waiting.

  ‘Well?’ he says.

  She nods. ‘Everything,’ she says. ‘Everything we suspected is true. And he’ll tell the Guards all that he’s just told me.’ She holds up the memory stick. ‘Leo copied the website – the one that Daniel saw when you were in Spain. The one that upset him so much. It’s all here.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Patrick says. He holds out his hand. ‘Let me see that.’

  But Ella holds onto it. ‘We’ll look at it together. I need to see this, too.’

  Patrick shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Why?’ he says. ‘I mean, why was this kid involved? Why was he even on the outskirts of it all? And what did Daniel ever do to him?’

  Ella sighs. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘It’s not about anything Daniel did. It’s about what he was. Different. Gentle. Sensitive. Leo’s not a bad kid – he just wanted what they all want. To belong. To be
one of the gang.’

  Patrick pulls her to him. ‘You’re exhausted,’ he says. ‘You have to rest.’

  Ella sobs. ‘It’s over. I think it’s finally over. We have enough.’

  She puts her arms around Patrick and they stand there, in the hallway, while the night gathers in around them.

  Part Four

  Thursday 21st March, 2013

  Sylvia

  IT WAS NIAMH who told me first. She had seen the comings and goings around Mr Murray’s office that morning. She’d heard all the commotion, too, except that she couldn’t make out what the people inside were saying. Then, just as she was collecting the photocopying from the school secretary for Mr Kelly, Jason came out of the principal’s office, on his own, and waited in the corridor.

  She knew who he was, of course. Everybody knew who Jason was. So she delayed a little, pretending to count the pages, to collate them – the way you do. Then the door behind her slammed open and she jumped, suddenly dropping the pages for real. They all slithered away from her and she had to bend down and start picking them up.

  ‘Come on, Jason,’ she heard a man’s voice say. ‘We don’t have to stay and listen to this. I’m taking you home.’ She watched, she said, as Mr MacManus frogmarched Jason down the corridor and out of the front door. Almost immediately, Mr Murray followed them into the corridor. But they had already turned the corner at that stage.

  For a minute, he looked as though he was going to hurry after them. But then he turned on Niamh instead. ‘Niamh Bolger,’ he said, ‘what on earth are you doing?’

  Niamh said she’d never heard him so angry, not like that. Annoyed, yes, irritated by misbehaving first years, but never angry. She was flustered, she said. Embarrassed. Terrified that he’d think she was eavesdropping which, of course, she was.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Murray, I dropped Mr Kelly’s photocopying. I’ll just be a minute.’

  Then he turned on his heel and went back into his office. Niamh gathered up all the pages as quickly as she could and ran.

  By eleven o’clock break, the news was all over the school. I remember it very clearly. It may be more than three years ago, and I may have been a very young fourteen, but I knew exactly what Jason’s departure meant. All of second year did.

  Aoife filled me in on the next bit. Some guy in her class had got a text from Jason at lunchtime, saying he was grounded. He wouldn’t be back to school, he said, until he’d been cleared of all the ‘unjust accusations’ against him. Even at the time, the language didn’t sound like Jason, not at all. It didn’t fit the Jason we all knew and loathed.

  In the way that these things happen, it was impossible to keep any news about Jason from spreading like a forest fire. It was Clare who had the next bit. She cycled all the way out to my house to tell me, one Thursday evening. It was much too complicated and exciting to deliver by text and, after all that had happened, she was terrified to go on gmail.

  A friend of her mum’s called Sharon cleaned for Jason’s mum in those days, and she was there, in the house, when the squad car arrived. There were a lot of details embroidered onto this description, some of them in very lurid colour. There would have to be, with Clare telling the story, so I’ll be brief. The upshot was that the Guards came into the house, put everything into tamper-proof bags and took it away with them. I knew that they’d done the same with Daniel’s stuff a couple of days earlier, but Mr and Mrs Grant asked me not to say anything. They took computers, laptops, phones. When they left her house that day, Mrs MacManus was standing weeping in the hallway.

  The buzz around second year the following day was unbearable. So much so, that Mr Murray and Miss O’Connor held an assembly at twelve o’clock. This was most unusual. They were open and straightforward in what they had to say and then they sent us to the canteen for a longer lunch than usual.

  They tried to keep a lid on things. Mr Murray talked to all of us about an ‘ongoing police investigation’ and that students would only be questioned with their parents’ permission. He spoke about the law ‘having to take its course’ and that everybody was entitled to a ‘presumption of innocence’. But no matter what language he used, everyone understood. It was strange, that. Even the dumber kids were in no doubt as to exactly what he meant. Jason was in deep trouble and we should tell our parents, and the Guards, anything we knew. End of.

  There was a lot of talk over the following weeks – some informed, some dreadfully misinformed – about IP addresses and embedded data and forensic software. About how easy it was for the police to track the senders of messages, and photographs, the makers and uploaders of videos. There was a lot of nervousness around in those days.

  I never saw Jason again. I heard that he’d been sent to some other school, a boarding school, but I have no idea whether any of that is true. Jeremy left after he’d finished third year. He’s still knocking around, somewhere. Leo stayed, and settled into second year along with the rest of us. What was left of it, once all the upheaval died down. Leo was okay. Nobody gave him a hard time.

  That only leaves James, the grunter. His parents took him out, too, and he went to another school about thirty kilometres north of here. I used to see him around at Christmas and Easter, never in the summer, though. And I haven’t seen him this year at all, not anywhere.

  In one way, what happened to Daniel feels a very long time ago. In another, it’s still way too recent. Mr and Mrs Grant gave me a tiny portrait that Daniel had done of me, during one art class when I wasn’t looking. I had a copy of it made, a smaller one, and I wear it around my neck in the locket that Grandma left me when she died last year.

  Edward and I are still friends. We still go to see Mr and Mrs Grant often – sometimes together, if it suits, but most of the time on our own. I guess we knew different Daniels.

  Tonight, though, we are both going to Mr Grant’s birthday party. We’ve to be there at seven. When we spoke, Mr Grant told us it was a very important evening – and not just because it was his birthday. He said he had an announcement to make. Maybe it’s about his memoirs – Mrs Grant told me he was writing them. Edward and I have bought him a beautiful fountain pen.

  I’m sure it will be a lovely evening. Sometimes I worry that Edward and I will remind the Grants too much of all that happened; that our presence reminds them of Daniel’s absence. But they keep inviting us; they keep including us in all sorts of things. My mother says it comforts them.

  Every time I see his parents, I have to wonder what sort of a person Daniel would be now. It still comes as a shock, each time I remember that he’s dead. But I won’t say that, of course. I’ll wish Mr Grant a happy birthday and we’ll just remember the better times.

  Like when Daniel was still here, still with us, just as he is in that gorgeous photo hanging above the piano. He’s standing on his dad’s boat, a fishing rod in his hand. His hair is standing up every which way and he’s grinning from ear to ear. Behind him is the shadow of Casey’s boatyard. And just to the left of the boat, there are two swans – exactly like the ones that Daniel used to draw.

  Silent. Serene. Their beaks almost touching each other.

  The white, elegant curve of their necks; their whole bodies almost like question marks.

  Frances

  DAD IS SEVENTY-FOUR TODAY. We haven’t gathered on his birthday in some time – not since the year before Daniel died, in fact. On that occasion, my Tom gave him a home-made birthday card, one that he had put together with great care.

  Tonight, or rather this evening, we’ll all be together again to help him celebrate yet another year of survival. I worry about my father. Since Daniel’s death, he has faded greatly. He has never lost the stoop that he seemed to acquire overnight. His robustness has all but vanished. In its place, there is a fragility that I see all too clearly – but a fragility that is nevertheless still fierce in its protectiveness of Ella. And another thing: my father has become kinder. He sees people in a way that he didn’t before. He anticipates, rather than reacts.
He is altogether gentler.

  I see Ella watching him from time to time. On the last occasion, I had to turn away from the intimacy of that glance: a look full of love, of sorrow, but also imbued with a stubborn facing towards tomorrow.

  In many ways, I fear that that is what my father has lost above everything: a sense of purpose for the future.

  But we will go and we will celebrate and we will wait to hear whatever announcement it is that he wishes to make. The years since Daniel’s death have been difficult ones. We have stopped asking about the legal process. After such apparently heady progress in the early months and years, it seems that everything has slowed to a crawl.

  Rebecca kept up the pressure, though. Of all of us, she took that particular ball and ran with it. She has helped Dad negotiate his way through the minefield of paperwork, of witness statements and affidavits and police procedure. She never once got frustrated. Instead, the two of them became more dogged, more determined as time passed. It was good to see that something was being mended between them after all those years.

  Rebecca doesn’t travel as much, now. In fact, she’s hardly ever away from home. About a year after Daniel died, she set up her own private mediation service. The state one was too slow, she told me, for people who wanted to end their marriages with a modicum of dignity – and efficiency. Things are going well. And it’s good that she’s home. As Sophie and I predicted, Aisling has become a real little madam. Rebecca has her work cut out there.

  I think that the three of us – Rebecca, Sophie and I – have all become a lot closer in the last few years. In the more distant past, it was often difficult for the three of us to get together. Sophie and I had two full-time jobs and five full-time kids between us, plus school committees and fundraisers and social lives. It was never easy to carve out sister-time. And Rebecca was hardly ever available. But Sophie and I kept trying to meet: even the attempt to do so was important to both of us, I think.