by Marian Keyes
We stayed in on Sunday night, snuggled up on the couch watching a video. Out of nowhere my head filled with a mental picture of me inhaling a lovely, long line of coke. Instantly I felt horribly hemmed in by Luke.
I shifted on the couch and tried to calm myself. It was Sunday night, I was having a perfectly lovely time, there was no need to go out and party. But I couldn’t shake the desire. I had to leave. I could taste gorgeous, acrid, numbing coke, I already felt the rush.
I fought it and fought it, but it was irresistible.
‘Luke,’ I said, my voice wobbling.
‘Babe?’ He smiled lazily at me.
‘I think I’d better go home,’ I managed.
He looked hard at me, the smile gone. ‘Why?’
‘Because…’ I faltered. I was going to say I felt sick, but the last time I’d tried that, he’d insisted on taking care of me. Making hot-water bottles for my imaginary stomach ache, and forcing me to eat stem ginger for my imaginary nausea.
‘Because I’ve a very early start in the morning and I don’t want to disturb you when I get up,’ I stammered.
‘How early?’
‘Six o’clock.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’ll do me good to go into the office early.’
Oh no. Why did he have to be so fucking nice? How was I going to escape?
‘Also I came out without a clean pair of knickers,’ I said in desperation. The feeling of being trapped intensified.
‘But you can collect them before you go to work in the morning,’ he suggested tightly.
‘Not with the early start.’ Panic took hold. I felt the walls of the room were moving in on me. I stood up and began to sidestep towards the door.
‘No, wait a second.’ He eyed me in a peculiar fashion. ‘You’re in luck, you left a pair here and I put them in with my washing.
‘Luke the laundress saves the day,’ he added grimly.
I almost screamed. I could feel sweat pop out on my forehead. ‘Look, Luke.’ I was unable to stop myself. ‘I’m not staying tonight and that’s the end of it.’
His eyes were hurt. But hard.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said frantically. ‘I need a bit of space.’
‘Just tell me why,’ he asked. ‘I mean, five minutes ago you seemed happy. Was it the video?’
‘No.’
‘Did I do something?’ he asked, with what might have been sarcasm. ‘Did I not do something?’
‘No Luke,’ I said quickly. ‘You’re great, it’s just me.’
From his angry, pain-lined face, I saw my words were falling on stony ground. But I didn’t care. Already I was in The Parlour, dancing and doing business with Wayne.
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ I gasped. ‘Sorry.’
Then I bolted for the door, too relieved to hate myself.
In ten minutes I found Wayne and asked for a gram.
‘Put it on the slate.’ I forced an anxious laugh. ‘I’ll be good for cash in a week.’
‘Don’t matter,’ he shrugged. ‘You know what they say – please don’t ask for credit as a bullet in the head often offends.’
‘Haha,’ I said, thinking what a fucker he was.
I eventually managed to persuade him to give me a quarter-gram, which was just about enough to lift that stifling sensation and give me a euphoric rush.
When I got back from the ladies’ he was gone.
To my alarm, the bar emptied out as everyone I even vaguely knew left. But it was only one o’clock. ‘Where are you all going?’ I asked anxiously, hoping to be invited along.
‘Sunday night,’ they said. ‘Work in the morning.’
Work in the morning? You mean they weren’t going on to a party, they were going home to sleep?
In a short time I was on my own, all revved up and no one to party with. I tried smiling at the few people left, but not a single person was friendly. Paranoia started to seep in. I’d no money, no drugs, no friends. I was alone and unwanted, but so reluctant to go home.
In the end I had to. No one would buy me a drink or loan me money. Even though I asked. Humiliated, I slunk away.
But when I got in and tried to go to bed, my head buzzed like a chainsaw and raced like a grand-prix car. It was worse now than it had been in The Parlour. So I took three sleeping tablets and thought I’d write a bit of poetry as I felt particularly creative and uniquely talented.
Still my head wouldn’t switch off, so I took a couple more tablets.
All the pleasure of the rush had left and I was trapped with a head that kept vibrating. I felt panicky fear. When would it stop? What if it never stopped?
My terror flitted hither and thither and came to rest on the thought of work the following day. My heart squeezed with dread. I really had to go, I’d been in trouble so much lately that I couldn’t skip it again. I couldn’t be late, and I had to stop making mistakes. For this, I really, desperately needed to go to sleep immediately. But I couldn’t!
Frantically, I tipped the rest of the sleeping tablets out of the jar and crammed them into my mouth.
Voices, brightness in my eyes, the bed moving and bumping, blue light, sirens, more voices, bed moving again, whiteness, strange sterile smell. ‘Dumb bitch,’ a voice says. Who is? I half wonder. Beeping sounds, feet running on corridors, metal banging against metal, rough hand on my chin, forcing my mouth open, something plastic on my tongue, scraping my throat. Suddenly gagging and choking, trying to sit up, being forced back down, struggling up again, retching and heaving, strong hands flattening me back against the table. Make it stop.
In less than twenty-four hours I was back home at my apartment. To find Margaret and Paul had arrived from Chicago, to take me to a rehab place in Ireland. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Apart from feeling I’d been beaten up, was swallowing razor blades and about to die from dehydration, I was OK. Fine, almost. It had been nothing more than an embarrassing accident and I was very keen to forget about it.
Then, to my surprise, Luke arrived.
Yikes. I braced myself to be berated for doing a runner and taking coke on Sunday night. I presumed that, in the whole stomach-pumping débâcle, he must have found out.
‘Hello.’ I smiled anxiously. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work? Come in and meet my lickarsey sister Margaret and her awful husband.’
He shook hands politely with Margaret and Paul, but his face was pissed-off and grim. In an attempt to put him in better form, I amusingly related the hilarious story of waking up in Mount Solomon puking my intestines up. He grabbed me tightly by the arm and said ‘I’d like a word with you in private.’ My arm hurt and I was frightened by the madness in his eyes.
‘How the hell can you make jokes about it?’ He demanded furiously, when he slammed the door of my bedroom behind me.
‘Lighten up.’ I forced myself to laugh. I was just relieved he wasn’t giving out to me for doing coke on Sunday night.
‘You nearly died, you stupid bitch,’ he spat. ‘Think of how worried we’ve all been – for ages, not just about this – think of poor Brigit, and all you can do is laugh about it!’
‘Would you ever relax?’ I said scornfully. ‘It was an accident!’
‘You’re mad, Rachel, you really are,’ he said passionately. ‘You need help, big-time.’
‘When did you lose your sense of humour?’ I asked. ‘You’re as bad as Brigit.’
‘I’m not even going to answer that.
‘Brigit says you’re going to a rehab place,’ he said, more gently. ‘I think that’s a great idea.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ I laughed splutteringly. ‘Me, go to a rehab place? What a joke!
‘Anyway, I can’t go away and leave you.’ I smiled intimately, to rekindle our closeness. ‘You’re my boyfriend.’
He stared at me long and hard.
‘Not any more, I’m not,’ he said eventually.
‘Wh… what?’ I asked, cold with shock. He’d been angry with me before, but h
e’d never broken it off with me.
‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘You’re a mess and I wish to Christ you’d sort yourself out.’
‘Have you met someone else?’ I stammered, horrified.
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he spat.
‘Why then?’ I asked, hardly able to believe we were having this conversation.
‘Because you’re not the person I thought you were,’ he said.
‘Is it because I did drugs on Sunday night?’ I forced myself to bite the bullet and ask the unaskable.
‘Sunday night?’ he barked, with mirthless laughter. ‘Why pick on Sunday night?
‘But this is about drugs,’ he continued. ‘You’ve a serious habit and you need help. I’ve done everything I can to help – persuading you to stop, forcing you to stop – and I’m exhausted.’
For a moment he did look exhausted. Bleak, miserable.
‘You’re a great girl in a lot of ways, but you’re more trouble than you’re worth. You’re out of control and I can’t handle you anymore.’
‘Oh no.’ I wasn’t going to be manipulated. ‘Break it off if you’re determined to, but don’t try and blame me.’
‘God,’ he said angrily. ‘There’s just no getting through to you.’
He turned to leave.
‘You’re overreacting, Luke,’ I said urgently, trying to grab his hand. I knew how much he fancied me, I’d always been able to win him over that way.
‘Get off me, Rachel.’ Angrily he pushed my hand away. ‘You disgust me. You’re a mess, a complete fucking mess.’ Then he strode out into the hall.
‘How can you be so cruel?’ I whimpered, running after him.
‘Bye, Rachel,’ he said and slammed the front door.
70
In the days leading up to Christmas I was very jumpy whenever I went into Dublin’s city centre. Luke and Brigit were probably home and I half-hoped I’d meet them. I constantly searched for their faces under the fairy lights, among the hordes of shoppers. Once I actually thought I saw Luke on Grafton Street. A tall man with longish dark hair striding away from me. ‘One minute,’ I muttered to Mum, then belted after him. But when I caught up, after nearly flooring a crowd of carol singers, I found it wasn’t him at all. This man’s face and bum were all wrong, not half as nice as Luke’s. It was probably just as well it wasn’t Luke. I had no idea what I’d have said if it had been him.
On New Year’s Day about twenty members of my family, plus assorted boyfriends and children, were crammed into the sitting-room, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and shouting ‘Show us your lad’ anytime Harrison Ford came on screen. Even Mum shouted it, but only because she didn’t know what a lad was. Helen was drinking a gin and tonic and telling me what it felt like.
‘First you kind of get this lovely warmth in your throat,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Stop it!’ Mum tried to hit Helen. ‘Don’t be annoying Rachel.’
‘No, I asked her to tell me,’ I protested.
‘Then the burniness hits your stomach,’ Helen elaborated. ‘And you can feel it radiating out in your blood…’
‘Looo-vely,’ I breathed.
Mum, Anna and Claire were systematically ploughing their way through a big box of Chocolate Kimberleys and with each new one they picked up they said ‘I can stop anytime. Anytime I want.’
In the middle of all the high jinks there was a ring at the door.
‘I’m not going,’ I shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Mum shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Claire shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Adam shouted.
‘Neither am I,’ Anna said as loudly as she could, which wasn’t very loud, but at least she’d tried.
‘You’ll have to go,’ Helen told Shane, Anna’s boyfriend. Shane was now unofficially living with us, because he’d been thrown out of his flat. So it meant we saw a lot more of Anna also, as she no longer had a bolt-hole to hide in.
‘Aaaaawwwwww,’ he moaned. ‘It’s just getting to the bit where he shoots the knife guy in the bazaar.’
‘Where’s Margaret when you need her?’ Adam asked.
‘LICKARSE,’ the whole room chorused.
The bell rang again.
‘Answer it,’ Mum advised Shane, ‘if you don’t want to be sleeping under a bridge tonight.’
He stomped out and came back in and mumbled ‘Rachel, there’s someone at the door for you.’
I jumped up, expecting it to be someone like Nola, hoping she liked Harrison Ford too. Certain that she would, though. Nola liked everyone and everything.
But when I got to the hall, there, hovering by the door, looking nervous and pale, was Brigit. I got such a shock, black patches scudded before my eyes. I just about managed to say hello.
‘Hello,’ she replied, then tried to smile. Frankly, it was frightening. We stood in silence, just looking at each other. I thought about the last time I’d seen her, all those months before, as she was leaving the Cloisters.
‘I thought it might be a good thing if we saw each other,’ she attempted awkwardly.
I remembered the millions of conversations I’d had in my head, where I’d humbled her with pithy putdowns. ‘So you thought, did you?’ ‘And tell me, Brigit, why would I want to see the likes of you?’ ‘You needn’t crawl in here, expecting me to forgive you, so-called FRIEND!’
But not one of them seemed remotely appropriate now.
‘Do you want to, um…’ I meekly gestured towards the stairs and my room.
‘OK,’ she said, and up she went, me following, checking out her boots, her coat, her weight.
We sat on the bed and did the how-are-you? bit for a while, followed by the you’re-looking-well thing. It made me very uncomfortable that she was looking so well. She had streaks in her hair and a groovy New York cut.
‘Are you still off the…?’ she asked.
‘Over eight months now,’ I said, with shy pride.
‘Jesus.’ She looked both impressed and appalled.
‘How’s New York?’ I asked, feeling a cramp of pain. What I really meant was ‘How’s Luke?’ followed closely by ‘How did everything go so wrong?’
‘Fine.’ She gave a small smile. ‘Cold, you know?’
I opened my mouth determined to ask how he was, but I hovered on the brink, desperate to know, but unable to ask.
‘How’s your job?’ I said instead.
‘Going well,’ she said.
‘Good,’ I said heartily. ‘Great.’
‘Have you an… er… job?’ she asked.
‘Me?’ I barked. ‘God, no, being an addict is a full-time occupation at the moment!’
Our eyes met, uncomfortable, alarmed, then speedily flickered away again.
‘What’s it like living in Dublin?’ She eventually broke the silence.
‘Lovely,’ I replied, hoping I didn’t sound as defensive as I felt. ‘I’ve made lots of good friends.’
‘Good.’ She smiled encouragingly, but there were tears in her eyes. And then I felt my throat thicken with tears of my own.
‘Since that day at… that place,’ Brigit began tentatively.
‘You mean the Cloisters?’
‘Yes. That old biddy Jennifer…’
‘Josephine,’ I corrected.
‘Josephine, then. God, she was awful, I don’t know how you put up with her.’
‘She wasn’t that bad,’ I felt obliged to say.
‘I thought she was terrible,’ Brigit insisted. ‘Anyway, she said something to me, about how nice it was to have someone to compare myself to, so that I was always the best one.’
I nodded. I kind of knew what was coming.
‘And… and…’ She paused, a tear splashing onto the back of her hand. She swallowed and blinked. And I just thought she was talking dross, I was so angry with you I couldn’t see that anything was my fault.’
‘It wasn’t,’ I insisted.
‘But she was right,’ Brigit ploughed on, as if she hadn�
��t heard me. ‘Even though I gave out to you, it made me feel good that you were so out-of-control. The worse you were, the better I felt about myself. And I’m sorry.’ With that she burst into noisy, energetic tears.
‘Don’t be stupid, Brigit,’ I said, trying to be firm and not cry. ‘I’m an addict, you were living with an addict. It must have been hell for you, I’m only just realizing how awful.’
‘I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,’ she sobbed. ‘It was dishonest.’
‘Stop it, Brigit,’ I barked, and she looked up in surprise, her tears shocked into ceasing. ‘I’m sorry you feel guilty, but if it’s any help the things you said to me the day you came to the Cloisters…’
She winced.
‘… It was the best thing you could have done for me,’ I continued. ‘I’m grateful.’
She demurred. I insisted again. Once more she demurred. And once again I insisted.
‘Do you mean it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I really mean it,’ I said nicely. And I did really mean it, I found.
Then she gave me a woebegone smile and the tension lifted.
‘So you’re really OK?’ she asked awkwardly.
‘I’m great,’ I said, honestly.
We were quiet.
Then she tentatively asked a question.
‘And do you go round saying you’re an addict?’
‘Well, I don’t stop strangers in the street,’ I said. ‘But when it’s relevant I say it.’
‘Like at those meetings you go to?’
‘Exactly.’
She leaned closer to me, her eyes gleaming. ‘Is it like that bit in When a Man Loves a Woman when Meg Ryan stands up in front of all the people and says she’s a jarhead?’
‘Just like it, Brigit.
‘Except,’ I added, ‘Andy Garcia doesn’t come running up to me at the end and try and drop the hand.’
‘Just as well.’ Brigit smiled suddenly. ‘He’s gruesome.’
‘Like a lizard,’ I agreed.
‘A good-looking lizard, mind,’ she said. ‘But a lizard is a lizard.’
For a few moments it was as if nothing bad had ever happened. We were pitched back in time and space to when we were best friends, when we each knew exactly what the other was thinking.