Driving her home he is quiet, remembering the scene outside the flower shop. His mother chats while he tries to reassure himself that they never kissed, that maybe there’s an explanation. But he knows Mark. He knows the explanation.
He has to stop thinking about her. He has to get over her. Switch off.
His father is at the front door, in conversation with a woman whose back is to them. As they approach, it seems to be more of a rant. He is telling her that she is wasting her time collecting for the wrong charity. There are better causes than the Irish Kidney Association. She is trying, as politely as she can, to disengage and make a polite exit. From her appearance, Rory gathers that this woman has had a kidney transplant. To her that charity must be the most important in the world. Rory remembers something Orla said about his father taking pleasure in upsetting people. He is a bully. And he will never change. It occurs to Rory that, growing up, he put all his energy into the wrong parent – in trying to please his father, he neglected his mother. And, subsequently, in avoiding his father, he has also avoided his mum.
Rory bins Louise’s sunglasses and Coldplay CD. The vase she left behind goes too, and whatever bits and pieces she forgot in her rush to get away. He has never actually removed songs from his iPod before and doing so turns out to be trickier than he’d imagined. But he works it out and deletes all those tracks he downloaded for Louise. And any that remind him of her. Which turns out to be most. His music library is now bare, an over-thinned forest. He will quickly tire of what’s left. He needs pre-Louise music. And a reminder of what that was. He checks iTunes. And it all starts flooding back, music from his single life. The Cure, The Christians, Fine Young Cannibals, Pet Shop Boys, tracks that remind him of how free he felt before he made the mistake of falling in love.
He rings Johnny, a mate from uni. ‘You heading out?’
‘Is the pope Catholic?’
‘Mark going?’
‘Mark? I haven’t seen him in ages. Out of the scene completely.’
Other things to keep him busy, Rory thinks bitterly.
‘Want me to give him a buzz?’ Johnny asks.
‘No. No. Don’t. I was just wondering. Count me in for tonight.’
‘And Louise?’
‘No. Not Louise.’
They meet in a pub in Blackrock village, one Rory hasn’t been to in a long time, a posers’ paradise, brown leather chairs, plenty of space, cream walls, people smartened up for a night out, women dressed for the wrong climate. Johnny introduces Rory to his mates, two guys he’s never met before. Though Irish, they could be Australian, dressed as they are for a day on Bondi – surfer T-shirts, three-quarter-length combats. Flip-flops. All they’re missing are coloured strips on their noses. And boards. Johnny, as always, looks younger than his thirty-six years. Rory now understands why. He puts in the effort. His hair is in organized disorder, teased into shape by some product marketed at men. Rory imagines a whole pre-night-out routine involving shower, shave, aftershave and facial cream. Rory just changed his shirt. His hair has no particular style. Just short. Being in a four-year relationship has done nothing for his marketability. He does not look like a man who is ‘out there’. He’s going to have to work on that. For the moment, a beer will do.
One beer follows another. The pace of the rounds is faster than he’s used to. Soon he is buzzing. The conversation, not that he gives a fuck about the conversation, is every so often interspersed with hottie-spotting. It works like this: someone spots a ‘hottie’ and signals her location using the twenty-four hour clock. Uniform headturning follows. If the Gods are smiling and she is part of a group of hotties, Johnny is dispatched to ‘open up’ a conversation. His hit rate is impressive.
By closing time, they are doing their bit for Irish-Polish relations. Rory is involved in a conversation with a blonde whose name might be Ulrika. She’s doing the talking. He’s doing a good impression of listening. Her English isn’t great. He’s a bit pissed. And he couldn’t care less about Irish food versus Polish. It’s all a bit too much like work. But she has an amazing mouth, if she could just stop moving it for a while. Finally, he stops it himself by landing his on it, pulling her close, taking her hand and leaving without a word to his mates. Outside in the cool night air, he becomes aware of just how hammered he is. He puts an arm around her and hails a taxi. One stops immediately. In the back, he finds that mouth again. And more.
He should have gone to her place. It doesn’t feel right having her here in the apartment. Oh, fuck it, he’ll turn off the lights. He takes her hand and leads her to the bedroom in the pale orange glow of the streetlights outside. Once she is in bed, he closes the door. Complete darkness. Better. He strips quickly and after a bit of comic groping, finds her. He is glad of her soft nakedness, her hair, breasts, mouth. He is glad not to be alone, and relieved that someone is attracted to him. He hopes he can do this. Maybe then he can forget.
There are no glitches in his performance and that’s a relief. Lying on his back afterwards, he smiles in the dark, beginning to think that maybe this was easier than he’d imagined. Her feet brush against his. Warm feet. Not the ice-cold blocks he is used to. There is a stranger in his bed, a stranger who is interested in the difference between Polish and Irish food. What is he doing? He doesn’t want this. But what can he do, ask her to leave? And so he lies there listening to the whistling sound she makes when she breathes, telling himself that there’s got to be a better way of getting over someone.
He wakes to the sound of the doorbell and a dog barking. He lifts his head. It feels like it is about to explode. He eases it back onto the pillow. His tongue is stuck to the top of his mouth and his stomach feels like it’s fermenting. Someone moves beside him and he turns his head – slowly. Blue eyes. Poland, he thinks. He smiles awkwardly and nods hello as though meeting her for the first time. Then alarm bells go off – if that dog doesn’t stop barking, he’ll be evicted. He checks under the quilt with his hand and is relieved to confirm that, yes, he did put his boxers back on after that brush with her feet. He hops from the bed, grabbing his denims and T-shirt and dressing in transit. He is almost at the door when he turns and runs back to the room. He makes a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture with his hands. ‘Stay here,’ he says. ‘Stay here.’
He closes the door behind him.
The bell rings again and this time he runs. Tripping over a red shoe, he flings it aside. Orla is turning to go when he opens up. Lieutenant Dan dashes in.
Rory stands, smiling, his hand up against the doorframe, casually blocking Orla’s way should she decide to follow.
She raises an eyebrow. ‘We’re on our way to the pier. Don’t suppose you want to come?’ She smiles as though she knows he’s hiding something.
‘Eh, no. Thanks, anyway.’
‘No probs,’ she says, turning. ‘Oh. Here, got you this.’ She hands him a bag containing a book.
He takes it. ‘Great, thanks.’
‘Aren’t you going to look at it?’
‘Eh, yeah.’ He reads the title. Go Ask Alice. Cover is bleak enough. ‘Great, yeah, thanks a mill.’
She’s still there.
He feels under pressure to check the back. Some sort of diary. A teenager who got involved in drugs. Not his kind of thing at all.
‘True story,’ she says. ‘Though there’s been some controversy about that.’
‘Great.’ He puts it back in the bag. ‘So!’
‘So,’ she smiles, ‘good night, eh?’
He follows her eyes to the other red shoe, lying on its side.
She calls the dog. And, luckily, the bastard goes to her. She winks at Rory. ‘See you later, lover boy.’
After she’s gone, he throws the book on the couch and walks out on to the balcony, his head back. He watches them cross the road, Orla leaning down, holding the dog’s collar. They run across, then up the steps of the pedestrian bridge crossing the DART line. He turns and goes back inside. What’s he supposed to do now, cook her breakfast?
> Later, he calls over to Orla. To explain. He brings flowers – bought at Louise’s most detested competitor, Tesco. While she puts them in water, he, in the minimum of words required, explains the situation he found himself in.
‘I wasn’t getting rid of you,’ he says when he has finished.
‘Yes, you were.’ She smiles.
‘OK, well, maybe I was. I’d just woken up. I hadn’t figured out what to do about her. All I knew was I wasn’t going to complicate things by introducing her to my friends.’
‘Your friend. I’m flattered,’ she jokes, putting her hand to her chest. ‘So, who was she?’
‘A mistake.’ He rubs an eyebrow.
‘Not the kind you normally make.’
‘No.’ He tells her about Louise and Mark. ‘Why Mark? Of all people?’ he asks. ‘Louise is paranoid about men walking out on women. And who does she end up with? The one man who changes girlfriends faster than razor blades. I just don’t get it.’ He stops. ‘Or maybe I do. Maybe it’s simple. I propose. She bolts. Into the arms of the nearest playboy. Doesn’t take a genius. She’s running from commitment.’ He looks at the lilies. ‘She couldn’t love him, could she?’
Orla says nothing.
‘She’s going to get hurt,’ he says, adding, when he sees the surprised expression on his sister-in-law’s face, ‘not that I give a shit.’
They’re silent.
‘There is another possibility,’ Orla says eventually.
He looks at her. Finally, some answers.
‘I don’t know whether this is the case or not but they say that we’re attracted to replicas of our parents so we can get a chance at making the relationship work second time round. Louise could be attracted to Mark because he’s like her father, giving her the opportunity to break the cycle of abandonment.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. She’s stacking the odds against herself from the beginning.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then why do it?’
‘It’s subconscious.’
‘So, hang on, wait a minute. Are you saying that Louise was only interested in me as long as I was like her father, that our relationship had nothing to do with falling in love with a person for who they are, that all relationships are down to what happened when we were kids?’ He can’t believe that.
‘It’s just a theory.’
‘It’s rubbish. I don’t believe it.’ He can’t accept that their four years together could be based on nothing other than his lack of commitment. ‘Well, then,’ and Rory thinks he has Orla here, ‘why did she leave me when she got what she wanted? I changed, became committed.’
‘Yes, but she wasn’t the one to change you.’
Once again, she has all the answers. And Rory resents her for it. Like a child who lashes out when hurt, he says, ‘I don’t think you should go into counselling.’
He doesn’t want reminders. At work he avoids Mark, steering clear of the canteen, buying what he needs from the tiny coffee shop and eating outdoors in the cold, overcast Irish ‘summer’. Where possible, he avoids public areas like the main concourse. Where impossible, he doesn’t linger – the locker room, corridors. He has another reason for bypassing the concourse; it houses the florist that Louise used to run before setting up in business. To wipe a person from your mind, best to avoid anything that triggers a memory.
He looks out for Lesley, though. Seeing her might answer some of his questions. Does she know? Is it over between her and Mark? Or is he seeing Louise behind her back? He tells himself he doesn’t care. But still watches out for her. An unfamiliar speech therapist arrives on the ward to see a stroke patient, making him suspect that Lesley has returned to England. He wouldn’t blame her. He’d do the same.
The only positive outcome of his misery is that when Wednesday comes and he has to identify his attacker at the dole office, he is too down to worry. Sergeant O’Neill was right. The guy arrives first thing. Rory confirms it’s him. And leaves. O’Neill later phones to thank him. He’ll keep him informed, he says.
Rory thanks him in return, but can’t seem to lift his mood to match the guard’s.
Reading in bed at night is an effective way to avoid thinking, Rory finds. He has just finished One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and without a book, he is edgy. He remembers the one that Orla left, stuck down the back of the couch, and throws back the duvet. Catching his reflection in the mirror, he notes how middle-aged he looks in pyjamas, a new addition to his wardrobe. He is cold without Louise. Has even started to wear socks.
He retrieves the book, sits on the couch, turns it over in his hands. The subject matter is, of course, the problem. It is short though. And written by a teenager, so it can’t be rocket science. He flicks through it. Lots of white space where one diary entry ends and another begins. It’ll do for tonight. He’ll buy another novel tomorrow.
The heroine, Alice, seems a normal kid, a bit insecure, but so what? She moves house. Goes to stay with her grandparents. Yeah, yeah. Oops, at a party, new ‘friends’ spike her Coke. The feeling of confidence it gives her is alien, and a relief, but once she discovers what has happened she is guilty and afraid. She has been warned about drugs. It won’t happen again.
Her new friends seem to really care though. They want to include her, share their drugs with her. Alice is no longer a social outcast. For the first time in a long time, she feels happy. But guilty. She should stop, she knows. She wants to tell her parents, but they’re back home. She asks to return, but her grandfather is ill and Alice has been such a help. When she does return home, she tries to stop but makes a new friend who is also on drugs. She slips deeper and deeper. She and her friend run away. Their lives darken. She wants to escape, get home, get clean. Rory, unable at two in the morning to put the book down, is hoping that she will.
She does.
But other druggies, former friends, put pressure on her to get using again. It is extreme, threatening. Her family is doing its best, but she is afraid and embarrassed to tell them everything. She meets a good guy and he helps her. She is still consumed by the bad things she has done and that were done to her. Guilt erodes her strength. As Rory nears the end of the book, he is reading about a battle; on the one side, her family and the boy, on the other, her guilt, addiction and enemies. But it is beginning to look hopeful and that the battle might be won. The diary ends positively. Rory is relieved. Then he reads the epilogue: three weeks after her last entry she overdosed. And died. At fifteen.
Rory is gutted. A life full of potential, wasted. This was no ‘drug addict’ but a fifteen-year-old, insecure girl who became a user, then a pusher, who was still a fifteen-year-old insecure kid trying to do the right thing, clean her slate and start over. Maybe it’s not true, Rory hopes, all of a sudden. Maybe it didn’t happen. Didn’t Orla say something about a controversy? Doesn’t matter, he decides. This story is being replayed over and over around the world every day. He is in no doubt about that. He thinks of Naomi and hopes that she hasn’t had to go through any of that, the sexual degradation, the violence, the pressure. He has refused to see her side, allowing his own experience to cloud the fact that she is a person involved in a struggle, trying to do right by her son, when the easiest thing would be to give in. He claims to want to help Jason, but what has he done to help Naomi, the most important person in Jason’s world? Nothing except distrust her. She is struggling in a potentially fatal tug of war and it’s about time he started pulling on the same side as Louise.
24
The following Saturday, Rory is alone when he calls for Jason. No Orla to act as a buffer. No dog in the car.
Naomi answers. ‘Oh, God. He’s gone to the shop. He should be back by now. I thought you were him at the door.’
‘No worries,’ Rory says. ‘I’m in no hurry.’ He thinks she will ask him in.
But she doesn’t.
They stand facing each other. Equally awkward.
He smiles to break the tension, puts his hands in his pockets. ‘So, how ar
e things?’ he asks, as if he really does care.
This seems to surprise her. She blushes. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Good. Thanks.’ She steps out, peers over the balcony. ‘Where is he?’
He wants to reassure her, tell her he’s on her side, that he didn’t understand before, but does now, as much as anyone who hasn’t been through it can. But the words don’t come.
‘Here he is,’ she says, sounding relieved.
Rory is relieved himself. He hears the sound of running feet on the steps, then sees the top of Jason’s head. It makes the boy seem vulnerable. Suddenly, Rory worries that he’s too young to be going to the shop on his own, especially in this neighbourhood. He checks himself. He has to start trusting Naomi. She knows her son. And she knows the neighbourhood.
Jason hands her a pack of cigarettes and change and turns quickly to be with Rory.
‘Bye, Ma,’ comes as an afterthought.
‘See you later,’ she says, a smile in her voice.
As they walk down the steps, Jason asks, ‘Which would you like for a pet – an electric snail or five hundred sticky lizards?’
‘Hmm. Difficult choice. I think I’d go for the electric snail.’
‘But you’d only get one of them.’
‘I know but I’d really look after him.’
Two weeks pass since Rory saw Louise with Mark. In that time, he has avoided Mark’s calls, letting them go to voicemail. He has ignored his texts. He wonders how long it’s going to take for him to get the message.
One evening, though, Mark rings the landline and catches him in.
‘Hey, stranger,’ he says. ‘What’s up? Where’ve you been?’
‘Busy.’
‘What have you been up to?’
‘Not much.’
Mark laughs at the contradiction.
Fuck off, Rory thinks.
Do You Want What I Want? Page 18