Frankie smiles. ‘Welcome to the world of singledom.’ She turns to Kate, whose face is scrunched up in disagreement. ‘When’s the last time Joyce allowed herself a little flirt with someone? She’s been married for so long.’
‘Please,’ Kate says patronisingly to Frankie. ‘If you think that’s what happens when you’re married then you’re sorely mistaken. No wonder you’re afraid to get married.’
‘I’m not afraid, I just don’t agree with it. You know, just today I was watching a make-up show—’
‘Oh, here we go.’
‘Shut up and listen. And the make-up expert said that because the skin is so sensitive around the eye, you must apply cream with your ring finger because it is the finger with the least power.’
‘Wow,’ Kate says drily. ‘You sure have revealed us married folk for the fools that we are.’
I rub my eyes wearily. ‘I know I sound insane, I’m tired and probably imagining things where there is nothing to be imagined. The man I’m supposed to have on the brain is Conor and he’s not. He’s really not at all. I don’t know if it’s a delayed reaction and next month I’m going to fall apart, start drinking and wear black everyday—’
‘Like Frankie,’ Kate butts in.
‘But right now, I feel nothing but relieved,’ I continue. ‘Isn’t that terrible?’
‘Is it OK for me to feel relieved too?’ Kate asks.
‘You hated him?’ I ask sadly.
‘No. He was fine. He was nice. I just hated you not being happy.’
‘I hated him,’ Frankie chirps up.
‘We spoke briefly yesterday. It was odd. He wanted to know if he could take the espresso machine.’
‘The bastard,’ Frankie spits.
‘I really don’t care about the espresso machine. He can have it.’
‘It’s mind games, Joyce. Be careful. First it’s the espresso machine and then it’s the house and then it’s your soul. And then it’s that emerald ring that belonged to his grandmother that he claims you stole but that you recall more than clearly that when you first went to his house for lunch he said, “help yourself” and there it was.’ She scowls.
I look to Kate for help.
‘Her break-up with Lee.’
‘Ah. Well, it’s not going to get like your break-up with Lee.’
Frankie grumbles.
‘Christian went for a pint with Conor last night,’ Kate says. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course I don’t. They’re friends. Is he OK?’
‘Yeah, he seemed fine. He’s upset about the, you know …’
‘Baby. You can say the word. I’m not going to fall apart.’
‘He’s upset about the baby and disappointed the marriage didn’t work but I think he thinks it’s the right thing to do. He’s going back to Japan in a few days. He also said you’re both putting the house on the market.’
‘I don’t like being there any more and we bought it together, so it’s the right thing to do.’
‘But are you sure? Where will you live? Is your dad not driving you insane?’
As a tragicee and future divorcee, you’ll also find that people will question you on the biggest decision you’ve ever made in your life as though you hadn’t thought about it at all before, as though, through their twenty questions and many dubious faces, they’re going to shine light on something that you missed the first time or hundredth time round during your darkest hours.
‘Funnily enough, no,’ I smile as I think about him. ‘He’s actually having the opposite effect. Though he’s only managed to call me Joyce once in a week. I’m going to stay with him until the house is sold and I find somewhere else to live.’
‘That story about the man … apart from him, how are you really? We haven’t seen you since the hospital and we were so worried.’
‘I know. I’m sorry about that.’ I’d refused to see them when they came to visit, and I’d sent Dad out to the corridor to send them home, which of course he didn’t, and so they’d sat by my side for a few minutes while I stared at the pink wall, thinking about the fact I was staring at a pink wall, and then they left. ‘I really appreciated you coming, though.’
‘No you didn’t.’
‘OK, I didn’t then, but I do now.’
I think about that, about how I am now, really. Well, they asked.
‘I eat meat now. And I drink red wine. I hate anchovies and I listen to classical music. I particularly love the JK Ensemble with John Kelly on Lyric FM, who doesn’t play Kylie and I don’t mind. Last night I listened to Handel’s “Mi restano le lagrime” from Act Three Scene One of Alcina before going to sleep, and I actually knew the words but have no idea how. I know a lot about Irish architecture but not as much as I know about French and Italian. I’ve read Ulysses and can quote from it ad nauseam when I couldn’t even finish the audio book before. Only today I wrote a letter to the council telling them how their cramming yet another new ugly modern block into an area in which its buildings are mostly older, less fashionable constructs means that not only is the nation’s heritage seriously under threat but the sanity of its citizens too. I thought my father was the only person who wrote strongly worded letters. That’s not such a big deal in itself, the big deal is that two weeks ago I’d have been excited about the prospect of showing these properties. Today I’m particularly vexed about talk of bulldozing a hundred-year-old building in Old Town, Chicago, and so I plan to write another letter. I bet you’re wondering how I knew about that. Well, I read it in the recent edition of the Art and Architectural Review, the only truly international art and architectural publication. I’m a subscriber now.’ I take a breath. ‘Ask me anything, because I’ll probably know the answer and I’ve no idea how.’
Stunned, Kate and Frankie look at one another.
‘Maybe with the stress of constantly worrying about you and Conor over with, you’re able to concentrate on things more,’ Frankie suggests.
I consider that but not for long. ‘I dream almost every night about a little girl with white-blonde hair who every night gets bigger. And I hear music – a song I don’t know. When I’m not dreaming about her I have vivid dreams of places I’ve never been, eating foods I’ve never tasted and surrounded by strange people that I seem to know so well. A picnic in a park with a woman with red hair. A man with green feet. And sprinklers.’ I think hard. ‘Something about sprinklers.
‘When I wake up I have to remember all over again that my dreams are not real and that my reality is not a dream. I find that next to impossible, but not completely, because Dad is there with a smile on his face and sausages on the frying pan, chasing a cat called Fluffy around the garden and for some unknown reason hiding Mum’s photograph in the hall drawer. And after the first few moments of my waking day when everything is crap, all those other things become the only things on my mind. And a man I can’t get out of my head, but not Conor, as you’d assume, the love of my life that I’ve just separated from. No, I keep thinking about an American man that I don’t even know.’
The girls’ eyes are filled, their faces a mixture of sympathy, worry and confusion.
I don’t expect them to say anything – they probably think I’m crazy – and so I look out to the kids again on the gymnas ium floor and watch as Eric takes to the balance beam, a four-inch-wide beam covered in thin leather. The instructor calls out to him to do aeroplane arms. Eric’s face is a picture of nervous concentration. He stops walking as he slowly lifts his arms. The instructor offers words of encouragement and a small proud smile lifts onto Eric’s face. He raises his eyes briefly to see if his mother is watching and in that one moment, loses balance and falls straight down, the beam quite unfortunately landing between his legs. His face is one of horror.
Frankie snorts again. Eric howls. Kate runs to her child. Sam continues to blow bubbles.
I leave.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Driving back to Dad’s, I try not to glance at my house as I pass. My eyes lose t
he battle with my mind and I see Conor’s car parked outside. Since our final meal together at the restaur ant we have talked a few times, each conversation varying in degrees of affection for one another, the last, at the lower end of the scale. The first call came late at night the day after our final meal; Conor asking just one last time if we were doing the right thing. His slurred words and soft voice drifted in my ear as I lay on my bed in my childhood box bedroom and stared at the ceiling, just as I did during those all-night phone calls when we first met. Living with my father at thirty-three years of age after a failed marriage, and a vulnerable husband on the other end of the phone … it was so easy right then to remember the greatest times we’d ever spent together and go back on our decision. But more often than not, the easy decisions are the wrong decisions, and sometimes we feel like we’re going backwards when we’re actually moving forward.
The next phone call was a little more stern, an embarrassed apology and a mention of something legal related. The next, a frustrated enquiry into why my solicitor hadn’t replied to his solicitor yet. The next, him telling me his newly pregnant sister was going to take the cot, something that made me fly into a jealous rage as soon as I rang off and throw the phone in the bin. The last was to tell me he’d boxed everything up, he was leaving for Japan in a few days. And could he have the espresso machine?
But each time I hung up the phone, I felt that my weak goodbye wasn’t a goodbye. It was more of a ‘see you around’. I knew that there was always a chance to back out, that he’d be around for a little while longer, that our words weren’t really final.
I pull the car over and stare up at the house we’ve lived in for almost ten years. Didn’t it deserve more than a few weak goodbyes?
I ring the doorbell and there’s no answer. Through the front window I can see everything in boxes, the walls naked, the surfaces bare, the stage set for the next family to move in and tread the boards. I turn my key in the door and step inside, making a noise so as not to surprise him. I’m about to call his name when I hear the soft tinkle of music drifting from upstairs. I make my way up to the half-decorated nursery and find Conor sitting on the soft carpet, tears streaming down his face as he watches the mouse chase the cheese. I cross the room and reach for him. On the floor, I hold him close and rock him gently. I close my eyes and drift away.
He stops crying and looks up at me slowly. ‘What?’
‘Hmm?’ I snap out of my trance.
‘You said something. In Latin.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes you did. Just there.’ He dries his eyes. ‘Since when do you speak Latin?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Right,’ he says sharply. ‘Well, what does the one phrase that you do know mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must know, you just said it.’
‘Conor, I don’t recall saying anything.’ He glares at me, something pretty close to hate and I swallow hard.
A stranger stares back at me in a tense silence.
‘OK.’ He gets to his feet and moves towards the door. No more questions, no more trying to understand me. He no longer cares. ‘Patrick will be acting as my solicitor now.’
Fantastic, his shit-head brother.
‘OK,’ I whisper.
He stops at the door and turns round, grinds his jaw as his eyes take in the room. A last look at everything, including me, and he’s gone.
The final goodbye.
I have a restless night in bed at Dad’s as more images flash through my mind like lightning, so fast and sharp they light up my head with an urgent bolt and then are gone again. Back to black.
A church. Bells ringing. Sprinklers. A tidal wave of red wine. Old buildings with shop fronts. Stained glass.
A view through banisters of a man with green feet, closing a door behind him. A baby in my arms. A girl with white-blonde hair. A familiar song.
A casket. Tears. Family dressed in black.
Park swings. Higher and higher. My hands pushing a child. Me swinging as a child. A seesaw. A chubby young boy raising me higher in the air, as he lowers himself to the ground. Sprinklers again. Laughter. Me and the same boy in swimming togs. Suburbs. Music. Bells. A woman in a white dress. Cobbled streets. Cathedrals. Confetti. Hands, fingers, rings. Shouting. Slamming.
The man with green feet closing the door.
Sprinklers again. A chubby young boy chasing me and laughing. A drink in my hand. My head down a toilet. Lecture halls. Sun and green grass. Music.
The man with green feet outside in the garden, holding a hose in his hand. Laughter. The girl with the white-blonde hair playing in the sand. The girl laughing on a swing. Bells again.
View from the banisters of the man with green feet closing a door. A bottle in his hand.
A pizza parlour. Ice-cream sundaes.
Pills in his hand too. The man’s eyes seeing mine before the door closes. My hand on a doorknob. The door opening. Empty bottle on the ground. Bare feet with green soles. A casket.
Sprinklers. Rocking back and forth. Humming that song. Long blonde hair covering my face and in my small hand. Whispers of a phrase …
I open my eyes with a gasp, heart drumming in my chest. The sheets are wet beneath me; my body is soaked in sweat. I fumble in the darkness for the bedside lamp. With tears in my eyes that I refuse to allow to fall, I reach for my mobile and dial with trembling fingers.
‘Conor?’ My voice is shaking.
He mumbles incoherently for a little while until he awakens. ‘Joyce, it’s three a.m.,’ he croaks.
‘I know, I’m sorry.’
‘What’s wrong? Are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, it’s just that, well, I – I had a dream. Or a nightmare or maybe it was neither, there were flashes of, well … lots of places and people and things and,’ I stop myself and try to focus. ‘Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim?’
‘What?’ he says groggily.
‘The Latin that I said earlier, is that what I said?’
‘Yeah, it sounds like it. Jesus, Joyce—’
‘Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you,’ I blurt out. ‘That’s what it means.’
He is quiet and then he sighs. ‘OK, thanks.’
‘Somebody told me that, if not when I was a child, but tonight, they told me.’
‘You don’t have to explain.’
Silence.
‘I’m going back to sleep now.’
‘OK.’
‘Are you OK, Joyce? Do you want me to call someone for you or …?’
‘No, I’m fine. Perfect.’ My voice catches in my throat. ‘Good night.’
He’s gone.
A single tear rolls down my cheek and I wipe it away before it reaches my chin. Don’t start, Joyce. Don’t you dare start now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As I make my way downstairs the following morning, I spy Dad placing Mum’s photograph back on the hall table. He hears me approaching, whips out his handkerchief from his pocket and pretends he’s dusting it.
‘Ah, there she is. Muggins has risen from the dead.’
‘Yes, well, the toilet flushing every fifteen minutes kept me awake for most of the night.’ I kiss the top of his almost hairless head and go into the kitchen. I sniff the smoky atmosphere again.
‘I’m very sorry that my prostate is bothering your sleep.’ He studies my face. ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’
‘My marriage is over and so I decided to spend the night crying,’ I explain matter-of-factly, hands on hips, sniffing the air.
He softens a bit but sticks the knife in regardless. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’
‘Yes, Dad, you’re absolutely right, the past few weeks have been every girl’s dream.’
He moves up and down, down and up to the kitchen table, takes his usual seat in the path of the sun’s beam, props his glasses on the base of his nose and continues his Sudoku. I watch him for a while, feeli
ng mesmerised by his simplicity and then continue my sniffing mission.
‘Did you burn toast again?’ He doesn’t hear me and keeps scribbling away. I check the toaster. ‘It’s on the right setting, I don’t understand how it’s still burning.’ I look inside. No crumbs. I check the bin, no toast thrown out. I sniff the air again, grow suspicious and watch Dad from the corner of my eye. He fidgets.
‘You’re like that Fletcher woman or that Monk man, snooping around. You’ll find no corpses here,’ he says without looking up from his puzzle.
‘Yes, but I’ll find something, won’t I?’
His head jerks up, quickly. Nervously. Aha. I narrow my eyes.
‘What’s up with you at all, at all?’
I ignore him, and race around the kitchen, opening presses, searching inside each of them.
He looks worried. ‘Have you lost your mind? What are you doing?’
‘Did you take your pills?’ I ask, coming across the medicine cabinet.
‘What pills?’
With a response like that, there’s definitely something up.
‘Your heart pills, memory pills, vitamin pills.’
‘No, no and …’ he thinks for a while, ‘no.’
I bring them over to him, line them up on the table. He relaxes a little. Then I continue searching the cupboards and I feel him tense. I pull on the cereal cupboard knob—
‘Water!’ he shouts, and I jump and bang the door closed.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ he says calmly. ‘I just need a glass of water for my pills. Glasses are in that cupboard over there.’ He points to the other end of the kitchen.
Suspiciously, I fill a glass with water and deliver it to him. I return to the cereal cupboard.
‘Tea!’ he shouts. ‘Sure, we’ll have a cup of tea. Sit down there and I’ll make it for you. You’ve been through such a tough time and you’ve been great about it all. So brave. Trophy brave, as a man says. Now sit down there and I’ll fetch you a cuppa. A nice bit of cake as well. Battenburg – you liked that as a wee one. Always tried to take the marzipan off when no one was lookin’, the greedy goat that you were.’ He tries to steer me away.
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