by A. S. Kelly
I strike him down with my searing gaze and he is smart enough to recognize it. He lowers his glance, unable to stand the rage and resentment I feel at him right now.
“I don’t know whose fault it is, but no one here is innocent. You’ve fed me a pile of bullshit and you’ve kept me in the dark about my life.”
“It’s not like that, Rain,” Aaron explains.
“Oh really, Aaron? How is it then?”
“We didn’t want to put that all on you, we were waiting until you got better.”
“More than two years have passed, Aaron. When did you think the right moment was going to present itself? No, you did it on purpose, you hid everything from me because you wanted to. Maybe it was easier for you that way.”
“Easy? Do you think it was easy for me or for them? We gave up everything, we changed our lives all to serve you better!”
“Aaron, that’s enough now!” Jay tries to calm him, while my brother comes threateningly close to me.
“We lost you Rain! I lost you. And then you came back, but you weren’t the same. You couldn’t remember anything. You didn’t even remember Mom and Dad.” Aaron clenches his fists even tighter as he begins sobbing. “You were not yourself!”
“Aaron, calm down.” Liam goes to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t the way.”
“But now she’s remembered everything, Liam. There is no other way.”
“I—I d-didn’t r-remember.”
The guys all turn to me, confused.
“And so what’s that message about?”
“It’s c-complicated…” I begin, stuttering and wiping my palms repeatedly on my jeans. “I had flashes, images. I remembered some things, conversations, moments—but I don’t know how to put it all together.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I still have lots of blanks in my memory, I don’t know how to clear my thoughts between what I know and—” I look at Liam before lowering my eyes. “—And what I imagine.”
The room falls into dead silence. I go to the bed and sit down Indian style, waiting for someone to start talking, but no one has the courage to do so.
So, I take a deep breath and ask, this time out loud and without stuttering:
“Who is Neil?”
The guys scrutinize each other some more before I can hear someone draw a deep breath and a voice wracked by tears.
“He was my brother,” Liam says.
And I fall into the darkness.
29
Liam
“He was my brother,” I tell her, without holding back the tears. “And he was your boyfriend,” I conclude, and go back to breathing. “It’s right for me to talk to you about him.”
Rain looks at me with a lost expression meaning that she probably doesn’t remember anything about Neil, and now I’m going to have to tell her everything. But that’s okay, it’s time for her to know, so that she goes back to her life.
The one without me in it.
“You met each other about ten years ago. We—we were all friends, we played together. We put a group together and one night you came down to bring Aaron home.”
“I was wearing those dumb pink pajamas.”
“Yes.” I smile at her through my tears. “You had those stupid and embarrassing pink pajamas. That I loved.”
I take a few more breaths before going on. It hurts me to remember and it hurts even more to know that I’m losing her, but telling her everything will free us from this enormous weight we’ve been carrying for too long.
“That night you met each other for the first time and he had a crush on you as soon as you came down the stairs. After about two weeks you were going out together and after a month, you were going steady. That’s how it was until the day of the accident.”
“Do you know how it happened?”
“Yes, Rain. You were with Neil.”
“So, I didn’t have an accident in the car by myself?” she asks, looking at Aaron.
“No, Rain, I invented that version.”
“Why? Why not tell me the truth?”
“Because you couldn’t remember anything, you didn’t remember Neil, you didn’t have any idea who he was and I wanted to avoid piling on more suffering.”
Rain nods thoughtfully, then looks at me again.
“N-Neil is—” she stutters, biting her lip.
“Yes, Rain. Neil died in the accident.”
Rain nods. “Were you driving?”
“No, he was behind the wheel.”
“What happened?”
“It was after the last concert in Dublin. We were offered a contract, a really big deal, a new album, a European tour and lots of money. We were out of our minds excited. Neil had drunk some, and I had too, but he insisted on driving. It was a bad idea and I should have stopped him.”
“Why didn’t I want to marry him?” she asks point-blank, turning the blood in my veins to ice.
“You—remember that?”
“I don’t remember the proposal, or how we got there. All I know is that I didn’t want to do it. Now I’m asking you why.”
She didn’t want to do it.
She didn’t want to be with him.
She wanted me.
My eyes fill with tears and my knees buckle, just in this moment and I fall to the ground. I put my hands on the ground and let my tears fall on the carpet, filling the room with my stupid pain and my relief because now I know she didn’t want to marry him.
“W-what—what did I say that was wrong?” Rain asks, close to tears herself.
“Nothing. You didn’t say anything wrong, Rain. Just the opposite. In fact you said the only thing that Liam needed to hear you say,” Jay explains, kneeling down next to me. “Everything’s okay buddy. It’s time.”
I nod, dry my eyes with my shirt and sit on the floor, leaning against the wall behind me.
“Maybe it’s best if we leave you alone—”
“No, Aaron. Stay, please. This applies to everyone.”
The guys all sit on the ground, ready to dig up the past, to lay their cards on the table and not hide anything anymore.
“You didn’t want to do it because of me.”
Rain nods again and looks at her hands, which are trembling.
“I loved you. I loved you for ten years in silence. Neil was one of a kind and you fell in love with him right away, and he with you. You were always together, and all of us were always together. There was the band and friends and—all the rest. We grew up side by side, facing our first disappointments together, and enjoying our first achievements together. You were an honorary member of the group, you were always right there with us and I was happy about that. While you and Neil planned your future together, I was dying in silence, day after day, because I knew sooner or later I would lose you. Finally the day came when I found you crying in your garden. You didn’t know what to do, because Neil had asked you to marry him. He was insisting, he wanted to bring you on tour with us. He did not want to leave you in Dublin. You had some doubts, but I thought you would have married him and that I would have had to forget you forever. I didn’t have any more excuses, I had nothing to lose. So, I asked you not to do it. And you ran away—and then there was the accident. Neil was dead and you were in that condition—and I never knew if in the end you would have married him or not.”
“I never could have done it, Liam,” she whispers, looking me intensely in the eyes.
My heart crumbles in her hands. The powder falls to the floor and I don’t bend to pick it up. As far as I’m concerned it can stay there, at her feet.
That’s where it has to stay.
Rain
“And so you were together in a band, you were famous too.”
Liam isn’t able to go on with his version of things, so I give him time to collect his thoughts and to breathe regularly, because it seems to me that all we’ve done until now is hold our breath. I try to keep my emotions in check and curb the instinct to assault him
with questions. My head is about to explode, the information I’ve taken in is too devastating and I don’t know if I’ll be able to sustain the blow. So, I turn to Aaron to see what else has been hidden from me.
“Yes, we were a band,” he tells me. “Famous? I guess, let’s say we were at the beginning of our trip.”
“Four Reasons to Die,” I say impulsively. “Five friends who would have given their lives for the others.” I look at his face as my expression sweetens slightly.
Aaron nods, visibly upset, emotional also perhaps because I remembered the reason that tied them to each other.
“We made an album that was doing well here in Ireland. A manager had come to see us live and offered us a contract. It was the moment to make a big jump. First England and then Europe. A new album, new songs, a tour lasting eight months. Then there was the accident. Neil was dead, he was our singer and the one who wrote the lyrics. He had talent and a feeling for sentimentality to sell. He loved you and—you were his muse. After the accident, you were in a coma for three months, then you woke up and you didn’t remember anything and you needed therapy and rehabilitation. You needed us.”
“And so you shelved your dreams because of me.”
“Not all of us.” Patrick, who had been silent until now chimes in: “We gave up the contract, but someone else thought long and hard about taking advantage of it.” He gives Liam the eye.
“Is that true? Is that what happened? Is this what Patrick was accusing you of? Y-you l-left?” My voice rises and I begin shaking. I grab my arms with my hands, trying to placate the tremors but my voice, broken by disappointment, betrays me.
“Rain—” Jay tries to hug me, but I walk around him and go towards Liam.
“You abandoned me?” I ask him, looking him straight in the eyes, where now there is only rage and contempt.
“You preferred your career to me? That’s how much you loved me?”
Liam doesn’t respond, he continues to look me in the eye, begging me not to dig any further. But I want to know and I want to know now.
“Yes,” he says with a sigh. “I signed the contract, I packed my bags and I left. I left you.”
“What kind of man could do something like that?” I throw at him. In the meantime he has gotten to his feet. I punch him in the chest repeatedly while he does nothing to stop me.
“I deserve everything, your contempt and your hate. I’m the only one responsible. It’s all down to me. The accident, your doubts, the end of the band, the death of my brother. Only. My. Fault.”
I stop suddenly and I look at him with eyes full of tears.
“I couldn’t handle it. I stayed for three months while you were in a coma and then you woke up. I stayed until you looked at me and asked me who I was. Then I understood, I understood that you wouldn’t need me, that no one needed me.”
“What?—I couldn’t remember anything, Liam, nothing!”
“I thought your mind had chosen for you, that it had decided what to remember and what not to.”
“What an absurdity!”
“I know. Now it seems like a pile of shit, but in that moment, try to understand me, I was devastated by the pain. I lost Neil and I lost you. The guys were in pieces, and my family was devastated and I had nothing. I lost everything I had in one bad fucking night. I didn’t want to live, to stay. I didn’t have the energy to stay by your side, even though Neil had asked me to.”
“Neil? When? I don’t understand…” I bring my hands to my head to avoid being overwhelmed by all of this information. I almost wish that I hadn’t woken up from that coma. It’s too, too painful.
“After the crash Neil had a few moments of lucidity—he asked me to take care of you, to stay by your side and to—to love you and protect you as he would have done.”
I shake my head and open my mouth but the truth is I have nothing left to say, nothing to comment.
Nothing.
I don’t have anything.
I am nothing anymore.
“I should have stayed,” he says, lowering his head.
I’d like to scream and fight with the whole world. Take this stupid heart and throw it out the window.
He didn’t stay.
He chose himself.
“And now, you should go.”
“Rain, wait, think about it.” Jay comes to his assistance.
“You should all go. I need to reflect, to understand to—put some fragments of these memories together. I can’t stand looking at any of you.”
Patrick stands up and comes to me and gives me a light kiss on the forehead.
“I love you, Rain, like a sister, and I do not regret the decisions we’ve made. I would do it again a thousand times. I’ll be here for you whenever you want.” And so saying he leaves the room with his head hung low.
“I’d give my life for you, Rain. You’re my family,” Aaron says with a drawn face streaked with tears, before hugging me and leaving me.
“I don’t know what to say. Maybe we made a mistake, it’s true, but I would do it again and I would choose you a thousand times and our family.” Jay hugs me and cries on my shoulder. I don’t feel like consoling him, I don’t feel like justifying him or the others.
I feel betrayed and made fun of.
I feel stupid.
“Rain—I beg you.”
“It’s o-over, Liam.”
“Let’s talk about it, let me explain—”
“I’ve heard enough. I don’t want you in this house and I don’t want you in my life.”
“I’ll love you anyway, you know that, right? I won’t stop even if you throw me out. You are my reason for living and you always will be.”
I look at him for the last time and the pain I read in his eyes is devastating, immense and destructive and it devours me in one bite. But there’s nothing I can do about it.
I feel nothing. I don’t feel myself.
I don’t want to feel anything.
30
Liam
Come up to meet you/Tell you I’m sorry/You don’t know how lovely you are/I had to find you/Tell you I need you/Tell you I set you apart.
My only companion is my guitar; the only thing I can do is play it as I drown in this sea of pain.
Nobody said it was easy/It’s such a shame for us to part/Nobody said it was easy/No one ever said it would be this hard/ Oh take me back to the start.6
I’m playing something that hurts me even more, because I need to continue to suffer, because I deserve it, because I want it and because I have to drown my desperation until I run out of tears.
Until it takes me away.
“Hey,” Jay comes into my room without knocking. The door is open, as always.
My fingers stop and the guitar stops shouting my suffering to the world.
“She went to go stay with Erin for a few days.”
I nod. I’m happy she has someone she can hang out with.
“Erin is the only person that has nothing to do with this. For us, it’s so much harder.”
“I understand it.”
“You know, I don’t regret it. Everything, I mean renouncing music, having found this place, having given her a simple life. That’s what she needed. Aaron and Rain have always been my family. After my mom died, they took me in, they gave me a place to stay, affection, support, comprehension and I’d do anything for them.”
Maybe he’s right, maybe this was really what she needed and my arrival was destined to upset everything and dig up the past.
Another fucking mistake.
“But it was also time for her to know, we couldn’t go on like that for ever. She just needs time and space, Liam.”
“She’ll forgive you.”
“She’ll forgive you too.”
“No,” I sigh with resignation.
“You’re wrong, you’ll see. She needs to get some clarity, put things in order, to understand, to put all the puzzle pieces together.”
“I hurt her, in the worst possible way. What was I
thinking?”
“To fix things. And you will, with time.”
I shake my head and get up from the bed. I go in the kitchen and get a bottle of Jameson and two glasses.
“Want some?”
“Why not,” he says, sitting on the stool at the table. The same one where I—no, I can’t think about it. If I let myself be transported by memories I could drown for real.
“What shall we toast?” He holds his glass up to me.
“Do you really think we have anything we can drink to?”
“Well, think about it. The worst has passed, you’ve touched the bottom and let’s say your face has been smeared in pig shit. Okay? Now the only thing you can do is clean yourself off, hold your head up and get on your feet.”
“How’d you get so smart?”
“Must be my age.”
“Must be, because in terms of experience—”
“—What are you trying to tell me?”
“When are you going to make a life for yourself?”