Falling out of Heaven

by John Lynch

  ‘How’s John?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean why? How is he?’

  ‘Oh all of a sudden you care. You sit here and you care. Where were you when he was crying for you? Did you care when he saw you punch holes the size of tennis balls in the walls of our house? No, I doubt you did. Jesus, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t cry or fight with you. I just wanted to come and see if you were okay and then get on with my life…’

  ‘Cathy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is he alright?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he miss me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We sit in silence. I think about getting up and leaving but something keeps me there. I know that we are both taking stock of where we have ended up, of the shattered mirror of our marriage. I see her shake her head, I want to take her in my arms and tell her that I feel strength returning to my bones, that my eyes are clearing and that my heart is hers for the taking. But I know better than to disturb the quiet that has settled over us. Besides I built our lives together on the fragile ground of hollow promises. I reach over for one of her cigarettes. As I do she seizes my hand, I feel her fingers tighten on my knuckles. I look at her and see her eyes fill with tears. The ferocity of her grip surprises me.

  ‘Gabriel, I’m sorry but this doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘It’s alright. Please, it’s alright.’

  ‘My parents want me to go ahead with the divorce.’

  ‘Okay. That’s not really a surprise. I mean they wanted you to divorce me even before we got married.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘I know it’s not funny.’

  ‘I told them that it was between you and me.’

  ‘You got that right.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Cathy? What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Nothing. There’s nothing to say. We’ve worn out every word we’ve ever said to each other.’

  When she leaves I ask the nurse to give me something to knock me out, something strong to burn the sentences my wife spoke to me from the lining of my brain. I’m told that medication wasn’t a room service menu to be dialled up and sampled whenever I felt like it, and that I will have to sit with whatever is bothering me. I tell her to stuff her fucking tablets which doesn’t go down too well. I am given a warning, it doesn’t make any difference. I tell her to fuck off again, and that I want my clothes, that I am going home. She tells me that isn’t possible. I then march to the security door and start yelling to be let out. Pat appears. I can tell he wants me to keep shouting because then he can have his way with me. I remember the figures that had hovered about me all those nights before, the glint of the syringe and the faces that floated in the air around me like satellites ringing the earth. I tell myself to calm down; I won’t give Pat the pleasure of getting his hands on me. I take deep breaths forcing cool air into my hot and fiery lungs. I turn to see Josey looking at me; her eyes are warm and full of understanding. She raises her hand and holds two fingers out to me, giving me the victory sign. I nod and look at Pat; his eyes are narrow and dark like a predator’s, waiting to pounce. I smile at the fucker, a big toothy grin even though my heart is breaking.

  Raw

  I am with Dr Burke. She is sitting opposite me. I have been called back. It is because I told the nurse to fuck off and caused a bit of a scene in the visiting area. I don’t mind, it’s not as if my day is brimming with activity. My head hurts, maybe it’s the drugs they’re giving me, maybe it’s the journey I’ve been on.

  ‘You were very angry earlier on apparently.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Your wife visited you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We thought long and hard about whether it was a good idea or not.’

  ‘Well you obviously got it right. I mean it all went swimmingly, didn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it was to be expected. You’re upset. You’re raw.’

  ‘You’re the doctor, doctor.’

  ‘Yes. Being flippant won’t help anything.’

  ‘But it sure as fuck makes me feel better.’

  I watch as she grimaces and looks down at her notes. She thumbs through them and then says: ‘The longer you are contrary, Mr O’Rourke, the longer you will stay here.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to bother you but I know only too well that it does.’

  ‘As I said, you’re the doctor, doctor.’

  ‘Tell me about the time you spent on the street,’ she says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘You can be a bloody-minded so and so, Mr O’Rourke.’

  ‘So can you.’

  ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘I’d rather not…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remember…’

  ‘You will eventually whether you like it or not.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remember.’

  ‘It wasn’t something that I set out to do…’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘It just…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Seemed to be part of the story…Part of the fall…’

  ‘You see it as a fall?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes…Yes, I do.’

  The Cave

  I am on my knees looking up into the confused gaze of a stranger. Someone I plucked from the stream of his life, an ordinary man who one moment was travelling to the warm predictability of his job and now stands embarrassed as another human being clutches at the hem of his coat. It was arbitrary, there was no design in my choosing of him. I suppose it was a little like fishing; I just cast out the line of my desperation and caught this young man, with his two-tone collar and bright ‘I’m alive’ tie. For a moment we just look at each other, no words separating us, no fumbling to get away, just for a second we connect and see two versions of the one soul. I see him gulp and a bead of fear prick his brow, and I know that I have him, that he will throw something my way just to be free of me, because he has seen a part of himself in my eyes. People step around us, refusing to look at the tableau that sits before their eyes. I don’t care, I’ll hold on to the one I’ve got, please, my eyes say, please, I’ll protect you, as long as there is me down here then it cannot be you. He pushes a couple of coins at me, I see they are golden, that they will buy me a small plot of land in that country where the dead roam and sing you to sleep.

  I let him go and grab the coins from the pavement. In an instant he has gone, swept into the business of his day. I know that the thought of me will stay with him. He will probably make a joke of it, telling his workmates how I smelled, how I had him by the coat as if I was going to propose to him, and how he hurled the coins at me to get shot of me. What’s the city coming to, he will say, adjusting his collar, toying with his cuffs, it’s ridiculous, dangerous to have these wretches in people’s faces.

  The off-licence is open when I arrive. The walk there is difficult, my heart is sore and lonely in my chest and my head throbs from the noise of cars and buses, and people jostling. The owner doesn’t look at me; he asks me what I want and then gets it without raising his eyes to mine. He is fat from sitting behind his counter day after day, year after year. I think about saying something but I decide against it, all I want is what’s in the bottle he sells me. As I leave I try and smile at him but it hurts my face.

  I hide the sherry in my coat and walk back out into the glare of the day. I search for somewhere to drink it and eventually find an alleyway and sit down behind one of the bins that dot it. I don’t want anyone to see me when I’m taken away by the booze. I tear at the cap of the bottle, throwing it away as soon as I tear it off; I c
ut myself on the serrated seal that runs along its neck. I put it to my head and close my eyes; I feel the rush of the liquid, the sweet punch of its taste. I rise to meet it, my soul, my heart, my will, every tired and hungry piece of my being. I feel myself being put back together.

  I ache for the moment to last. I drink again, head back, throat open, taking it down, but already it’s fading, and my body is rebelling, my stomach churning. I gag some of the liquid back into the bottle but keep it tilted so that it comes back immediately. I drink through the retching, through the nausea, getting it into my system as quickly as possible. Eventually I take it from my head and lie back against the wall. The world quickens around me, melting into itself, the alleyway becomes a warm cave lit by the glow the alcohol has put in my stomach, and children play at the mouth of it, their shadows leaping joyfully onto the wall behind them.

  Within minutes I am swimming in the deep waters I have been looking for all day. I am in a stupor where everything goes through me like a light breeze leaving no stain, no worry, and no pain. My eyelids are hooded, my mouth slightly open, and my hands lie by my side as if they belonged to someone else.

  For a while I didn’t see them, the strangers that came to take from me. I thought that they were just ghosts from my mind thrown up onto the wall of the alleyway. I didn’t even feel frightened when one of them grabbed me by the hair and shook my head from side to side, I think I even smiled. One of them put his face up close to mine; I could smell his breath, it smelled like mine. He grinned at me for a long time and his mouth made little chewing noises like a mouse that’s come across some cheese.

  I tried to say hello but the words wouldn’t come; they rattled around my brain and never made it to my mouth. It wasn’t until I could feel their hands rummaging in my pockets that I realised what they were at. I put my arms up and kind of waved at them to say no, to say stop it but I think one of them thought that I was trying to hit him so he smacked me in the mouth. The pain arrived a short time after the blow, like when I was a kid watching a farmer in the distance hammering fence posts, the noise of it reaching my ears a moment after he struck them. I could taste the blood in my mouth and then he hit me again in the same place, his grin getting wider.

  The smacks to my mouth immediately put flesh on my attackers and I tried desperately to get to my feet, but they were on me in an instant, kicking and punching, tearing and pulling. Then it went black just like in the films and all the sound and madness stopped and I was left fading into the dark.

  Shilling Hill

  The nurse on night duty has given me a sleeping tablet. I had to ask her three times. It is difficult to sleep now that they have lowered the dosage of my medication. I lie in bed waiting for the pill to take effect. For a while nothing seems to be happening, but then slowly but surely I feel a numbness invade my brain stilling all the squibs of thinking that have held me prisoner for the past few hours. My heart settles into a calm rhythm. My body is warm and relaxed and I picture myself standing by the ocean at Shilling Hill just south of Dundalk, watching the trawlers fighting the swells of the water, hounded by a smattering of feeding gulls waiting to steal scraps of fish from their decks.

  It is a summer’s day, the kind that tells you there is hope; you can see it in the swirl of the birds as they play in the rising wind. My father is there. He had come to my bed a few nights before for the first time, and this day was his apology, I know that now, his present to replace what he had taken from me.

  My mother too was there, opening the packets of fish and chips that we had bought on the way, laying them out on the tartan car rug as if they were the food of kings. My sister was running along the shoreline, taunting the surf that ran hissing onto the beach. I don’t see any of them, I claim that day as my own. I was the only person alive, the only one with eyes to see.

  ‘Are you alright, son?’ my father asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I see him standing beside me, smaller, diminished by memory and the deed he had done. There was guilt in his voice, I heard as surely as the call of the seagulls that wheeled above us. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and raised his hand to his forehead and gazed out at the horizon. The skin on his face looked grey and bloodless.

  ‘What a day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  Then he put his arm across my shoulder, lightly pulling me to him as we stood and faced the sea. I know now that it was as close as he ever came to saying that he was sorry. I could feel it in the way he held me, even though my skin was crawling. It was gentle and tender as if he was trying to make up for what he had done to me. I remember the way my mother looked at me that day as we ate huddled together on the car rug. It was different, like she was seeing something in me for the first time. She held my eyes a little longer than usual, as if she was trying to solve a riddle I had presented her with. It unsettled me and I found myself looking away and finding refuge in the horizon beyond.

  As always, we had prayed before we ate, my mother leading the way. I remember how the words stung my mouth and refused to be born. I clasped my hands together and bent my head, willing myself to give thanks for what I was about to receive but nothing would come.

  It is the look on my father’s face though that haunts me as he stood beside me and we faced the vastness of the world together that day all those years ago. He had the look of a man staring into the abyss, knowing that what was left of him lay in pieces at its bottom. He no longer had the playfulness in him, a shadow had moved across his heart and he now walked hand in hand with the broken of this world and he had given me the same privilege.

  I am drifting into sleep; I feel my mind give in to its gentle call. I like the feeling as if a burden has been lifted from me. I try to say my father’s name but it sticks in my throat, I try to forgive him, but the thought of it lights a fire in the centre of my being, so I push the image of him from me. I see my wife and the hope she carried in her eyes when we first met. Even then as we held each other, an army of two, ready for what the world would throw at us, something in me told me that I would lose, that I wasn’t made for happiness.

  I am nearly asleep now. I can no longer feel my body, I am moving beyond it. I am falling and the walls around me are dark and as soft as a woman’s inner thigh. Nothing is holding me anymore; I am free and moving towards sleep and its strange blank pastures.

  The Warriors of Winter

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Huh…?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  He is young, but his eyes look older than his face, they are clouded with impatience and a seriousness that I know that I must be careful around.

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Come on. Sit up when you’re talking to me. Come on.’

  I can feel his hands on me. I can see how he turns his head from me as he touches me, as if he was disgusted by me.

  ‘Come on now. Do what you’re told.’

  ‘Wait…Wait…’

  I raise my hands in front of my face to let him know I’m no threat, but he doesn’t understand. I had a bottle, I’m sure I did, I kept a bit to help me through the morning, I know I did. Fuck. I know I have to be quick as he’s getting really impatient now; his grip has tightened on me. My eyes hold his, there is a plea in them; maybe it will buy me a little more time, and my hands begin to hunt along the spaces around my body.

  ‘Come on. I haven’t got all day.’

  He begins to hoist me, I feel my body slipping and sliding inside my clothes.

  ‘You don’t understand?’ I say.

  ‘I understand very well. Now up on your feet when you’re told.’

  He raises me to my feet and rests me against the wall. His radio crackles and hisses like a nest of snakes and he looks me in the eye.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  I shrug. His change of tone surprises me and
for a moment I forget the thumping in my brain and the need in my fingers to raise my bottle to my head.

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘I haven’t got one…I sold it to a passing stranger.’

  ‘Smart arse.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, I am…’

  ‘You can’t sleep here.’

  ‘But I did…’

  ‘I know that you did. But you won’t in the future. Understood?’

  I look at the neat line of his uniform, the way the peak of his cap cuts across his gaze giving him an air of mystery and authority, and I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. How many men and women has he lifted up from the gutter of their nightmares and asked them over and over again for their name, their address, their next of kin. I can feel the quaking beginning in me. It starts in my gut and moves quickly to my heart and then along my limbs. I know what my body is asking for and I must get free of this young policeman. Perhaps I hid my bottle so that it wouldn’t be stolen from me as I slept, the trouble is I can’t remember, I can never remember.

  ‘Please,’ I say.

  ‘Yes?’

  He looks at me with a mixture of pity and impatience, his eyes holding mine.

  ‘I need to…’

  ‘Yes, I know. I know what you need. This will only take a moment. Until then you will do as you’re told. Okay?’

  I nod, but even that is becoming an effort.

  ‘Let’s go back to the beginning. Name?’

  ‘Gabriel…’

  ‘Well that’s one half of a good answer.’

  ‘O’Rourke…’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Well…?’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘It used to be Temple Drive just off the Dublin Road.’

  ‘Used to be?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Number?’