by Marian Keyes
Then she stood up. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said, awkwardly. ‘I’ve got to pack.’
‘When are you going back?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Thank you for coming,’ I said.
‘Thank you for being so nice to me,’ she replied.
‘No, thank you,’ I said.
Any chance of you coming back to New York?’ she asked.
‘Not in the foreseeable future,’ I said.
I went downstairs to the door with her.
‘Bye,’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘Bye,’ I replied, my voice matching hers, wobble for wobble.
She opened the front door and put one leg outside, turning away. Just as I thought she was gone, she swung back and flung her arms around me and we hugged each other fiercely. I could feel her crying into my hair and I would have given everything I ever had to put the clock back. For things to be the way they used to be.
We stood for a long, long time, then she kissed me on the forehead. We hugged again. And she went off into the cold night.
We didn’t promise to stay in touch. Maybe we would and maybe we wouldn’t. But things were OK now.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t devastated by grief.
I cried for two solid days. I didn’t want Nola or Jeanie or Gobnet or anyone, because they weren’t Brigit. I didn’t want to go on living, if I couldn’t have the life I’d had with Brigit.
I thought I’d never get over it.
But I did. In a matter of days.
And I was suffused with pride that I’d gone through something so painful and hadn’t taken drugs. Then I felt a strange relief that I wasn’t tied to Brigit anymore. It was nice to know I could survive without her, that I didn’t need her approval or endorsement.
I felt strong, standing alone without splints or crutches.
71
On into the spring.
I got a job. It was only as a part-time chambermaid in a small local hotel. The money was so bad I’d probably have been better off if I had paid them. But I was delighted with myself. I took pride in arriving on time, working hard and not stealing any money I found lying on the carpet, the way I used to. Most of the other people who worked there were schoolgirls, supplementing their pocket money. I would have found this very humiliating in my former life, but not now.
‘What about going back to school?’ Jeanie suggested. She was in the second year of a science degree. ‘Maybe do a degree, when you know what to do.’
‘A degree?’ I was appalled. ‘But it would take too long. Maybe four years. By then I’d be thirty-two. Ancient!’
‘But you’re going to be thirty-two anyway,’ she pointed out calmly.
‘What would I do?’ I asked, as the impossible, the out-of-the-question, suddenly became not so ludicrous. Possible, even.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jeanie. ‘What do you like?’
I thought about it.
‘Well, I like all this,’ I said shyly, indicating us. ‘Addiction, recovery, people’s heads, their motives.’
Ever since Josephine had told me she was an addict and an alcoholic, the idea of achieving what she’d achieved had rattled around in the back of my mind.
‘Psychology,’ suggested Nola. ‘Or a counselling course. Find out, ring up.’
Then it was the fourteenth of April, my first anniversary. Nola and the girls made me a cake with a candle. When I went home, Mum, Dad and my sisters had made another cake.
‘You’re great,’ they kept saying. ‘A whole year without a single drug, you’re fantastic.’
The following day I announced to Nola ‘My year is up, now I can ride rings around myself.’
‘Good girl, off you go,’ Nola said, with a wryness that unsettled me.
I soon understood what she’d been getting at when I found there was no one I wanted to sleep with. No one I fancied. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t meet any men. Apart from the thousands of lads in NA, I’d started going on occasional nights out with Anna or Helen. Forays into the real world, with real fellas who weren’t addicts and who didn’t know that I was. It always came as a surprise when they tried to get off with me. Of course, I had to go through the tedium of explaining to them why I didn’t drink. But even when they realized there was no hope of getting me into bed by drunken means, they still hung around.
One or two of these interested parties were even attractive, wore good clothes and had jobs in bands or in advertising.
I certainly wasn’t making the most of my liberation from purdah. The trouble was, whenever I thought of going to bed with someone, the person I instantly thought of was Luke.
Gorgeous, sexy Luke. But I only spent a fraction of a second reflecting on how gorgeous and sexy he was, before rushing to remember how appallingly I’d treated him. Immediately I felt very ashamed and sad. Not to mention scared to death because Nola kept telling me to write to him and apologize. Which I was far too mortified and afraid to do in case he told me to fuck off.
‘Face him,’ Nola kept urging. ‘Go on, he sounds like a dote. Anyway, you’ll feel so much better.’
‘Can’t,’ I mumbled.
‘So what’s wrong with these boys who keep asking you out?’ Nola questioned me, when I’d spent a full hour whingeing to her.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I shrugged irritably. ‘They’re either boring or a bit thick or they’ve got some other girly hanging around, gazing at them with cow eyes, or they think they’re God’s gift or…
‘Even though some of them are good-looking,’ I acknowledged. ‘That Conlith is very good-looking, but all the same…’ I trailed off miserably.
‘They’re not good enough, is that what you’re trying to tell me?’ Nola demanded, as if I’d just invented a cure for AIDS.
‘Exactly!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I couldn’t be arsed wasting my time, I’ve better things to do.’
‘Janey macaroni, but you’ve changed,’ Nola said.
‘Have I?’
‘Sure, think of what you were like a year ago,’ she sang. ‘You’d have slept with the tinker’s dog, to avoid being by yourself.’
I thought about it. And with a shock I saw that, of course, she was right. Had that really been me? That desperate creature? Dying for a boyfriend?
How things had changed.
‘Didn’t I tell you you’d get better?’ Nola demanded.
‘Stop being so smug,’ I chastised. ‘It’s unbecoming.’ But I smiled as I said it.
‘Do you know what you have?’ she asked. ‘What’s that it’s called again… Oh yes – self-respect!’
72
With shaking hands I opened the letter. It was addressed to me, c/o Annandale’s Hostel for Women, West 15th St, New York.
It was from Luke.
I hadn’t intended to go back to New York. Ever.
But when I came to my fifteenth month of being drug-free, Nola suddenly suggested that I should go.
‘Ah, go on,’ she said, as if it was no bother to me. ‘Sure, why not?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Do,’ she eagerly urged. Then she turned as nasty as she could. Which wasn’t very.
‘If you don’t go,’ she pointed out, ‘you’ll always feel desperate whenever you think of it. Ah, go on! Go back to the places you used to go to, make it up to the people you upset.’ Nola always said nice things like ‘People you upset,’ when she should have been saying, ‘People whose lives you almost destroyed.’
‘Like Luke,’ I said, shocked by how excited I’d become at the thought of seeing him.
‘Especially Luke.’ Nola smiled.
‘The dote,’ she added.
I couldn’t stop thinking about New York. I was obsessed with the place, and it seemed I’d no choice but to go.
And, once I saw that going could be a reality, the Luke-floodgates opened. To my horror, I realized what I’d suspected for some time. That I was still mad about him. But I was terrified that he might hate me, or have forgotten m
e or be married to someone else.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Nola urged. ‘Either way it’ll be healing for you to contact him.’
‘The pet,’ she added, with a fond smile.
My parents were appalled.
‘It’s not for ever,’ I explained. ‘I’ve got to be back in October to start college.’
(The people who make such decisions had decided to let me have a stab at studying psychology. I’d danced many a happy jig the day I got notification of that news.)
‘Will you stay with Brigit?’ Mum asked anxiously.
‘No,’ I said.
‘But you’ve made it up with her,’ she insisted.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it wouldn’t be appropriate.’
I was pretty sure that Brigit would’ve let me sleep on her couch, but I’d have found it hard to be in that apartment as a short-term guest. Besides, even though I now had very warm feelings for her, I thought it was somehow healthier for me to be independent of her when I returned to New York.
‘But you’ll contact her while you’re there?’ Mum still sounded worried.
‘Of course I will,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing her.’
And then everything happened very quickly. I borrowed a pile of money, changed most of it into dollars, booked my flight, got a room in a women’s hostel, because I couldn’t afford an apartment, and packed my bags.
At the airport, Nola handed me a piece of paper with an address on it.
‘She’s a friend of mine in New York, give her a ring and she’ll mind you.’
‘She’s not a drug addict, is she?’ I demanded, rolling my eyes exaggeratedly. ‘You only ever introduce me to addicts. Haven’t you any nice friends?’
‘Give Luke a big kiss from me,’ she said. ‘And see you in October.’
New York in July, like being smothered with a wet, warm blanket.
It was too much. The smells, the sounds, the buzz from the streets, the multitudes of people, the upbeat brashness of everyone, the huge buildings towering over Fifth Avenue, trapping the humid July heat, the yellow cabs bumper to bumper in the gridlocked traffic, the dieselly air hopping with carhorns and inventive expletives.
I couldn’t handle the sheer energy of the place. Or the number of loopers, who sat beside me on the subway, or accosted me on the street.
It was all too in-your-face. I spent the first three days hiding in my room at the hostel, sleeping and reading magazines, the blinds drawn.
I shouldn’t have come, I thought miserably. All it had done was open up old wounds. I missed Nola and the others, I missed my family.
Jeanie rang from Dublin, and I was thrilled, until she gave out shite to me.
‘Have you been to any meetings?’
‘Er, no.’
‘Have you rung Nola’s friend?’
‘No.’
‘Have you looked for a job?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, bloody well do. Do it now.’
So I forced myself to leave the safety of my bedroom, and set off walking aimlessly through the hazy heat.
Except it wasn’t that aimless. In fact it wasn’t aimless at all.
It was more what you might call a retrospective of my life in New York. A homage.
Here was the place I’d bought the lime-green mules I’d been wearing the first night I got off with Luke, there was the building where Brigit worked, up that way was the Old Shillayleagh, down there was the nasty garage where Brigit, Luke and I had gone to see Jose’s sister in the crappy ‘installation’.
I lurched around, staggering under the weight of memories. Crippling nostalgia washed over me with every step I took.
I passed what used to be The Llama Lounge, but was now a cybercafé. I walked by The Good and Dear that Luke had taken me to, and nearly fell to my knees with the agony of what might have been.
I walked and walked in ever-decreasing, ever more excruciating, circles until I was eventually able to enter the street where Luke used to live. Slightly pukey from nerves – although it might just have been the heat – I stood outside the building where he once lived, perhaps still did even. And I thought about the first time I’d ever been there, the night of the knees-up in the Rickshaw Rooms. Then I thought about the last time I’d ever been there, the Sunday night before my overdose. I hadn’t known then it was my last time; if I had, maybe I would have treated the occasion with a bit more gravitas. If I had, maybe I would have taken steps to ensure it wasn’t my last time.
I stood in the baking street and pointlessly, powerlessly ached to be able to change things. I wanted to go back and make the past different. I wanted to be still living in New York, to never have left, to not have been an addict, to still be Luke’s girlfriend.
I lingered for a while, half-hoping Luke would appear, half-hoping he wouldn’t. Then I realized if anyone saw me they’d think I was a stalker, so I moved off.
At the end of the street, I stopped. I had to. Tears blurred my vision so much I was a danger to myself and to others. I leant up against a wall and I cried and cried and cried and cried. Mourning the past, mourning the other life I might have lived if things had been different.
I might still be there now, roaring my head off, had not a Spanish-speaking woman come out and with energetic waves of a sweeping brush invited me to piss off and stop lowering the tone of the neighbourhood.
I hoped my little walkabout had laid to rest any lingering feelings for Luke. It would have to, because I couldn’t pluck up the courage to actually contact him.
Instead, I focused my attention on constructing the rudiments of a life. The first thing I did was get a job. It was very easy to get a job in New York.
If you’d no objection to being paid slave wages, that is. It was in a hotel, a small, Italian, family-run one. Quite nice, apart from the poxy money. Looking back, I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever let myself work in somewhere as awful as the Barbados Motel.
Then I rang Brigit, nervous yet excited about seeing her. But, irony of ironies, she’d gone home to Ireland for her summer holidays.
Over the next couple of weeks things kind of got into a routine. Albeit a very dull one. I went to work and I went to meetings and that was about it.
The girls in the hostel were mostly wholesome farmhands from one of those down-South states that was the incest capital of the world. They answered to great names like Jimmy-Jean and Bobby-Jane and Billy-Jill. I was mad-keen to make friends with them, but they seemed a bit frightened and suspicious of everyone except each other.
The only ones who were friendly to me were Wanda, a nine-foot, peroxided, gumchewing Texan, who was having a lot of trouble coming to terms with not living in a trailer. And a beefy, short-haired, moustachioed woman, who answered to the name of Brad. She was very friendly, but, frankly, I suspected her motives.
It was a strange time. I felt alone, apart, separate. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Except that the feelings brought about by my being back in New York were still overpowering. At times the nostalgia nearly killed me.
And also the horror. I remembered going home with total strangers, and I felt panicky fear for myself. I could have been raped and murdered so many times. I remembered how I used to feel that the entire city was evil. Going back had unleashed an entire new dimension of memories. The Luke-nostalgia, in particular, showed no sign of abating. It got worse. I started to dream about him. Terrible dreams that it was two years previously and my life hadn’t gone apocalyptically off the rails, and he still loved me. Of course, it wasn’t the dreams that were terrible. The waking up was.
I knew I had to see him. At least I had to try. But I didn’t want to because he was probably going out with someone else and I didn’t think I could bear that. I tried to console myself that he mightn’t have a girlfriend. But why wouldn’t he? I asked myself. Even I’d kind of had sex with someone, and I was supposed to have been celibate at the time.
The days passed in
a kind of dreamscape. I had an unpleasant task hanging over me and, being me, I preferred to turn a blind eye to it.
Old habits die hard.
I tried to use the excuse that I didn’t have his number. But, unfortunately I did. What I mean is, I still knew it off by heart. Home and work. Always assuming he was still working and living where he had been a year and a half previously. That wasn’t guaranteed, New York had a lot of through trade.
One night, when I’d been back about five weeks, and was lying on my bed reading, I suddenly felt filled with the courage to ring him. With no warning, it seemed like an outrageously feasible thing to do and I couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about. Quickly, before the urge passed or I talked myself out of it, I rushed, purse in hand, to the phones in the hostel hall, almost knocking people to the ground in my haste.
Ringing from there was slightly inhibiting, what with Bobby-Ann and Pauley-Sue queueing up behind me to talk to their pet lambs back home. But I didn’t care. Fearlessly I pressed out Luke’s number, then when it began to ring I went into a panicky spin about what I’d say to him. Should I say ‘Luke, prepare yourself for a shock’? Or, ‘Luke, guess who?’ Or, ‘Luke, you may not remember me…’? Or was it more likely to be ‘Luke, please don’t hang u…’?
I was so hyper I could hardly believe it when I got his machine. (‘Living on a Prayer’, Bon Jovi.) After all the trouble I’d gone to, he wasn’t even there.
Bitterly disappointed, yet undeniably relieved, I hung up.
At least I knew he was still living at the same address. However, the whole ordeal of ringing had depleted me something ferocious, so I decided it might be better for my nerves to write to him instead. Also, it meant less chance of him hanging up on me.
It took a hundred and seventy-eight attempts before I settled on a letter that was humble, friendly and non-proprietorial in the correct proportions. In most of the ones I binned I’d veered towards acute prostration (‘I’m not worthy to live on the sole of your shoe’). But when I’d toned the apologies down I wondered if I sounded too cold, like I wasn’t sorry enough. So they got crumpled up and thrown at the wall also.