by A. S. Kelly
He’s right.
“And Neil wouldn’t have done it either,” he concludes, stabbing me in the chest with his finger.
“You can’t be sure.”
Even I don’t believe it. Even though he wanted to be successful, Neil was a sensible guy and was tied to all of them. He certainly would not have packed his bags. He would not have accepted the first offer that came along. He never would have left her.
“It’s like this, and you know it. Neil was different—”
“—to me.” I concluded his sentence.
It was true. Neil wasn’t like me. He had a heart and soul, and that’s why he wrote all of our music and lyrics. He loved. He loved her and he had inspiration to sell, while I loved the idea of success and all I wanted was to get out of here, away from our past and the difficulties we had shared all our lives in hopes of a better future.
“It’s not too late to make it right, you know.”
I force a smile. “It is for me.”
“It isn’t, even for you.”
“What makes you think so?” I ask once again, lowering my glance to drink the dark liquid in my glass.
“You’re here now. You could have gone about your business without looking back and instead, look where you are. In this little shit town trying to right what you did wrong. You had it all in your hands, and yet, you came back. It should mean something.”
I don’t reply because I’m not sure if he’s right. It’s true, I came back, hoping to do something good. To maybe cancel some of my mistakes and give a possibility—not to me obviously, but to her, to them, all of them.
“She’s at home, anyway.”
“Hum?”
“In case you were wondering, she’s at home. It’s not a good day today. Jay is with her.”
“Jay?”
“He’s always the one who stays with her on one of her bad days. Aaron can’t handle it, he can’t bear to see her like that, and me? Well, you know me, I’m just more useful here.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
He puffs, cleaning the counter and taking away my glass.
“Because I want you to know what you’re up against.”
~ ~ ~
I didn’t make him repeat it a second time. I left the pub immediately before Aaron could see me, with my heart pounding in the agitation that oppresses and annihilates me every fucking day.
In less than ten minutes I’m in front of the house. I know where it is. I’ve known since the first day. It seems like a quiet and reserved place. Coming here was the right decision for all of them and I can’t help thinking I should have done it too. I should have stayed. Given it all up right away and set up here, to put things in order, to take care of her like I was asked.
The gate is open so I go down the gravel pathway, bringing me right to the main door. I knock and wait a minute. I can hear footsteps falling before I see Jay’s face in the door’s window.
“What are you doing here?” he asks with a soft worried voice as soon as he opens up.
“I was at the pub and Patrick told me you were here, so I—”
“Let’s knock it off with the bullshit, alright? Come in before I regret it.”
He lets me in and I can’t help sweeping my eyes over the place. Seems okay. Everything is where it should be, it’s clean. Basic but welcoming. It’s very different surroundings from the places we grew up in, those small, disorganized houses with walls that were covered with mold.
“You guys have a pretty nice set-up.”
“We had a bit of money from the sales of our album and we made an investment,” he responds, preceding me into a big kitchen and heading towards the fridge. “Want something to drink?”
I shake my head and raise my hand to signal I’m okay like this. I already had a beer at the pub and I have to stay clear of anything that could become addictive for me.
“She is—”
“—in the back garden. Come,” he says, inviting me to follow him.
We pass a luminous dining room painted in warm tones, with an enormous table with six chairs at the center and an ample glass door leading out to the back garden. We stop in front of the closed glass and Jay indicates with a finger: “There she is, asleep in the hammock. It hasn’t been a good day.”
“What happened?” I ask, not able to untangle my eyes from her figure curled up on the hammock, with a cover carefully laid over her body.
“Migraine—it comes and goes. It’s a side effect of the trauma. There are good days and—less good days. She’s been in bed all day and most of the afternoon, but I convinced her to get a little air, but it seems she was exhausted.”
I clench my jaw and close my eyes to contain the rage that comes with my sense of guilt. Jay puts his hand on my back and I open my eyes and look at him.
“Come on, I wanna show you something,” he tells me.
I follow him up two flights of stairs without stopping to look at my surroundings, keeping my eyes on my feet. I go up the steps one at a time with a growing sense of anxiety knotting up my stomach and my guts. He opens the door at the top of the stairs and goes in first. I figure that this must be her room. He steps aside and invites me in and I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, to invade her personal space, her life like that—again. I take a few more steps, knowing that this is going to hurt me, again, but maybe that’s just what I deserve. I lift my eyes and look around. Just a few minutes are enough for me to understand, to fall apart, to fall to my knees and start sobbing like a child whose pet cat has just died.
“What have I done?” I cry through my tears.
Hundreds of post-its in various colors completely cover the closet doors of her room. They may contain names, addresses, dates, notes.
Me.
I’m here too in her thoughts.
Jay comes closer and helps me stand up, then looks me straight in the eye, grabbing my arm.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
I don’t believe him, I can’t believe him. It was me, it’s all my fault. Only my fault. I don’t deserve to exist, I don’t deserve to keep breathing. I don’t deserve to be next to her.
And I let myself fall into Jay’s arms that hug and reassure me like no one else has before now. Certainly not my family, none of whom can even look me in the eye since Neil has died, destroyed as they are by the loss and consumed by rage directed at me, because I wasn’t able to save my little brother. Nor my friends who turned their backs on me when I needed it, only to show up leeching free passes for a concert or looking for a favor. Not the musicians, the managers or all the people that flocked like vultures around my head, ready to break me in a million pieces if I wasn’t who they wanted me to be.
No one.
No one took care of me, no one ever told me everything was going to be alright one way or another. No one ever gave me some words of comfort, comprehension or help. No one was there for me.
No one ever told me it wasn’t my fault.
In that moment Jay’s words interrupt my thoughts, hitting me right in the chest and taking my breath away.
“Are you sure you can do it, Liam?”
Rain
“I fell asleep. Thanks for covering me up, Jay,” I say as I go back inside, but I freeze in the doorway, surprised.
What’s he doing here?
“Hey, baby.” Jay comes at me. He gives me a kiss on the forehead, then hugs me and rubs my back to warm me up.
Liam goes rigid, clenching his fists on the table. I can see him but only over Jay’s shoulder.
What the devil is happening here?
“H-hi, Liam.”
He stands up, maintaining a tense, rigid posture.
“Hi, Rain. Jay told me you weren’t feeling well. How do you feel now?”
“Confused and hungry.” I wriggle out of Jay’s embrace and slouch off to the door to the dining room, smelling a pleasant odor coming from within.
“Good, because I’m cooking.” Jay goes towards the kitchen. �
��Will you set the table?”
“Are you staying?” I ask Liam, feeling myself blushing.
Having him here makes me feel embarrassed but also calm. As if he were one of us.
“Sure. If it’s alright with you,” he says and I nod immediately.
“Why not? And luckily, Jay cooks, because if I did it—”
“—She would send us to the hospital,” Jay calls out, smiling and making his entrance with a big pan in hand.
“Chicken breasts and potatoes in Guinness. That’s all I know how to make.”
“Thanks, Jay,” I say, touching his arm and squeezing it just a bit in recognition.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see Liam is still upset. As soon as I come near Jay he seems to go rigid.
“I’ll get the silverware and the napkins,” I say, heading towards the kitchen. “Could you please get the glasses in the hutch, Liam?”
“Certainly.” He moves slowly in search of what I’ve just asked him.
I go to the kitchen to get what we need and Jay is right behind me.
“Everything okay?” he whispers in my ear.
“S-sure, why do you ask?”
“Is it okay that he’s here or does it make you uncomfortable?”
“I’ve been living with you three forever. You think a little testosterone is going to be hard on me?” I smile back, even if I’m not sure of my answer.
His presence does agitate me but at the same time it’s calming; it’s hard to explain, but I imagine for a mixed-up mind like mine, it’s normal.
I go back to the dining room with the needed supplies followed by Jay, who sets two beers and a coke down on the table.
“Alright, let’s eat.” He sits down.
We eat in silence, immersed in the peace and tranquility of this place. This house is surrounded by green, and it’s a few hundred meters from the city center and directly faces the sea.
I like living here, I don’t remember what my life was like before this, in the city chaos, but I know this is what I have now. I love living in this house with the boys and I can’t help but ask myself when it all will end, because sooner or later it must. Everyone will go their own ways, maybe far from here, but it won’t be like that for me.
I get sad thinking about it and start playing with my food on the plate, having lost my appetite. I feel my eyes burning and my bottom lip start to tremble. I bite it involuntarily, as if I could stop the emotion that come from my chest and rob me of my breath, but I know I won’t be able to hold it all in. I am cursedly emotional. This is also a result of my accident. I am unable to control my emotions regardless of what they are: euphoria, happiness, joy or sadness and depression. Everything comes out, without breaks. There’s nothing I can do to avoid it. I am always vulnerable, and I hate the fact that I can’t hide my real state of mind.
A tear falls directly on my food and I hope no one has noticed; but then my shoulders start to shake and I’m hiccupping. So I let my fork fall onto the plate and I hide my face in my hands as if it were enough to hide me and shield me from everything.
I hear a chair scrape on the floor, someone has gotten up and is coming towards me, going down on his knee beside me. So I throw myself in his arms and he holds me.
“Shh—it’s okay, it’s nothing, darling. Was my chicken that bad?”
I break out laughing and set my head more securely on his shoulder, because I already feel like I’m calming down. Some times it’s just a moment’s loss of control, other times it could last an hour. And it can last for entire days at a time.
I open my eyes and see Liam, immobile at the other end of the table. He’s looking at me with a timid smile. In his expression I see neither compassion or pity, nor confusion, nor fear. In his transparent eyes that are almost like ice, I see tenderness, sweetness and comprehension. And something else I’m not able to define. I’ve become pretty good at understanding people’s emotions and feeling empathy for others. Maybe because I’m so sensitive to these things. But in him, now, I can see something indefinite, something that calls me and asks me to stay.
I reach out my hand spontaneously, keeping it raised in his direction, asking him with my eyes to do it, to come here and hug me, not because I need it, or better, I would like to—What the heck, who wouldn’t? But I feel like it’s what he needs in this moment.
He needs to be part of something.
He needs to be a part of me.
He stares at my hand for a few seconds with open lips. Then he takes a deep breath, moves the chair out of the way and walks towards me. He brushes my hand and I forget I’m here in this room, in this house; that Jay is the one holding me, and that I just had an emotional crisis. That I am wrong, that I am me.
I forget everything in the way he moves and gets down on one knee next to us, and wraps his arms around both of us tightly. Jay goes rigid for a second and lets up the pressure on me, but doesn’t turn to look at him. He closes his eyes and lets himself be hugged, letting out his breath and relaxing under his weight.
~ ~ ~
We’re all in the garden with a cup of tea. I’m laying on the hammock with my head on Jay’s legs as he swings us. Liam is sitting on the bench in front of us, with his eyes on this strangely quiet, limpid nightscape. The full moon lights up the garden, giving his face a warm glow that give his hard and impenetrable features softer, sweeter lines.
No one made mention of what happened, as if it was all normal. Well, Jay is used to my mood swings and my emotional crises. He never makes me feel bad about it. But Liam, he doesn’t know me well enough, he doesn’t know a lot about me. He doesn’t know my back story and my condition. And yet his unexpected tenderness surprised me and warmed my heart.
After having hugged for a few minutes, we gathered ourselves, we got up and put away the leftovers and cleared the table in a most reassuring manner. Then we had our tea, which is the best cure for everything.
“So, what plans have you got, my friend?” Jay breaks the silence, speaking to Liam.
“I don’t know, I still haven’t made a decision about it.”
“You can’t live out your life in a hotel room, I’m sure.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You know, we’ve got a free apartment over the pub. It’s a mess right now, but we could get it together.”
Liam raises his eyes, resting them first on Jay and then on me as if he were waiting for our approval.
“And there’s always so much to do at the pub. Might be useful to have an extra hand around, if you remember how it’s done.”
I smile and raise my eyebrows hopefully. I ask him with my eyes to stop and stay, to allow me to get closer to him, to get to know him, to try out these emotions, even if I know they’re wrong, but they’re powerful feelings which I’m not ready to give up.
I’d just like to dream a bit.
“For the moment I think I’ll remain in the area,” he says, looking somewhere else and drinking his tea.
Jay smiles, hiding his face behind his cup.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
What the heck, I’m happy too.
14
Liam
“What the fuck is your head telling you, Jay? He can’t stay here.”
Aaron is furious. Jay has just let him know about his offer to let me stay here.
“Calm down, Aaron. We’ve got an unused apartment and we always need a hand at the pub. And I think it’s better to keep an eye on him from close up.”
“Putting him under the same roof as my sister?”
“They won’t be under the same roof—”
“What are you trying to do, Jay?”
“I’m offering a hand to my friend. You should too.”
“Not when she’s in the middle of this situation. I do not want her to suffer.”
“Okay, guys,” I intervene. “I can find an apartment somewhere else. I can’t stay forever at the hotel, but I can find some other place that doesn’t make anyone feel uncomfortable
. There’s no need to get hot under the collar about this for me.”
“We’re always fighting over you, Liam,” Aaron tells me. “You’re always the one who gets into trouble, always have been since you were a kid.”
I nod because it’s true. I always have been the black sheep in the group.
“I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“And what would that be? Trying it on with her? Trying to take his place?”
A low blow from Aaron, but I deserve it.
I deserve it all.
“It’s not like that, you know.”
“How is it, then?”
“I’m not here for that, Aaron. She loved him, you know it, we all do. I’m nobody, I never have been, and she doesn’t remember anything, so there’s no danger. I just want to be her friend.” I tell them, revealing more of my feelings than I’d intended.
“She’s got friends, she has us, she doesn’t need you.”
“Aaron,” Jay breaks in. “Try to calm down. We’ll keep the situation under control. Rain enjoys his company, nothing bad will happen—”