The Leaving

by Gabriella West

  He swung around to face me. “Look, give me a break. OK?”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” I said bitterly. “You’re not going to give me that satisfaction.”

  I did not understand the way he jealously hugged to himself what he was up to. I knew he wasn’t doing it to spite me on one level; on another, I was almost certain that he was. To spite me and make me feel excluded.

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he said sharply.

  “But it is a big deal.”

  That seemed to touch him. He said, more gently: “All right, if you want to know, we finally ...” he paused, “got together.”

  “Where?” I asked. It seemed important.

  “If you must know,” he said shortly, turning back to his work, “down by the canal. Now piss off, will you. I’ve got lots to do here.”

  I stood, staring at his shoulders and his bent head. Glancing around his room in an effort to bring myself back to reality, I noticed his gray diary lying beside his bed.

  * * *

  Next day I stood by his bed.

  I had attempted to read it once before, but had been repelled by his terrible scrawl. Also, I had felt too guilty to persevere. It was when he’d told me he was gay and I wanted to know what he’d written about it. I’d decided that it didn’t matter.

  It mattered now. I picked up the book, turned it to the last page. Yesterday he had written just one word.

  Finally!

  I turned the page back, caught my name, read. The words were frighteningly easy to decipher.

  R. asked me was I worried about Cathy. Yeah, I am. Nothing I can do, though, and it’s best if I just stay out of it. I’m worried already that I’ve changed her somehow. She said she liked R., but it wouldn’t have worked. I don’t feel guilty about that. She’s like Dad. Clumsy with people. Anti-social. The way she talks is so inappropriate. She’s heading for some kind of disastrous relationship, with God knows who.

  I don’t think she knows what it’s all about. So much for her great mind. Maybe she’ll never feel anything for anyone. I can see her in ten years -- a lonely drunk, maybe. Like Dad again. It’s not my responsibility and I want her out of my hair. R. agrees.

  I read it a few times. “R. agrees” was the worst. Fuck him. Fuck them both. The paragraph dared me to destroy it. Grabbing a pen, I began methodically to black out each word. Vivid epithets raced through my mind. At the same time I began to cry. I wouldn’t put any of them down. I couldn’t. He would hate me forever if I wrote anything like that. I stood holding the book for a long time. Then I turned the page. Faced with the last entry I simply tore it out, crumpled it into a ball and put it on top of the diary. I put the diary back on his bedside table. Somehow I felt I would never be able to walk into his room again.

  At the door I was faced with a feeling of terror. What had I done?

  Why? He would have to rewrite now, both his judgment of me and his triumph. Would his judgment of me be even harsher, his triumph more lovingly detailed?

  A bang. Front door. My father back from work. He clomped down the hall to the kitchen. My mother’s voice. Then my father’s loud summons:

  “Cathy! Your ma wants you to peel the spuds.”

  I went downstairs.

  * * *

  The water ran cold over my numbed hands as I scraped away at the dirty potatoes. It was dark outside. I could hear my parents’ voices from the back garden; they had gone out to have a quiet row. The walls were so thin in our house that it had become a habit for them to use the garden as their arguing ground.

  Stevie would be in any minute. I felt sick. My anger had all gone. I could never stay angry for very long. The only thing I felt now was guilt.

  In he came; the front door shut. I stared at my hands, trying to fight the sinking feeling. I kept on working mechanically. He would go upstairs first, no doubt. He always did.

  But this time he didn’t. I did not look up as he came into the kitchen, whistling.

  “Where’s Mum and Dad?”

  “Out there,” I mumbled.

  He came and stood beside me. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder, and gave me a squeeze.

  “What’s up, Cath? Anything new?”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I shook my head; he took his hand away.

  “Something is,” he said gently.

  The words “I read your diary” ran over and over in my brain. I knew I would not say them. Better to deny that anything had happened. We would both do that quite well.

  Clearing my throat, I said shakily: “Would you give me a hand?” Anything to keep him there a few minutes longer.

  “Of course,” he said. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and joined me at the sink.

  I looked up at him briefly, at his puzzled eyes, and looked away.

  We stood at the sink in silence as the dirty water drained down the plughole.

  Chapter 2

  That year, 1984, was my “Inter” year, the Inter being the intermediate exam you did when you were around fifteen. Two years later came the appropriately named Leaving Certificate: “the Leaving” as it was ominously referred to.

  Although the exam itself meant very little, there was a concerted campaign among the teachers to make you believe that it was vitally important. It was a foregone conclusion that some of my class would do disastrously in the Inter, and would have to “repeat” the year. Thus began a miserable time for slow learners and fast alike. The slow learners, who made up about 80 percent of my class at St. Fintan’s, were subjected to continual harassment and threats from the teachers, who dreaded the idea that Fintan’s results would be below the national average again (as they were, predictably, every year). It was hardly conceivable that Fintan’s could be a prestigious institution of learning anyway. But the teachers persevered in trying to get us to shape up. It was touchingly plain from their sometimes frenzied faces as they gave us sad, warning lectures on the quality of our homework or attention spans, that they cared, that in fact they shared the collective panic of most of their pupils.

  I cared too. I was worried about my Inter. I wanted to get good marks and was by no means sure that I would. It was a public exam and as June came closer and closer I often wondered who would correct my papers. I imagined some middle-aged schoolteacher in Kerry poring bad-temperedly over my English essay, running red pen through the more pretentious phrases, which Mr. Casey would have appreciated, and scowling at my attempts at black humor.

  It was to be a blackly humorous year.

  While I was working away every night in the spring months revising for my Inter, Stevie had a more serious ordeal ahead. It was his last year in school and (although I didn’t know much about it) the idea of where he should apply to college and what subjects he should do there was perplexing him. His future was being decided in these months. I had little say in it.

  We weren’t talking much. I hardly ever saw him for more than an hour or two a day. We would all eat together in the evening, and in front of our parents we carried on what must have seemed a fairly natural, casual conversation. It was then actually that I felt it safest to talk to him. Somehow when we were alone together I found myself unable to say much. A lot of topics had become taboo. Ron had. I guessed they saw each other after school, since I vaguely remembered hearing that Ron’s parents both worked. They were professionals. His mother was in the civil service. In fact, both his parents did something like that. Or maybe his father was an accountant? I couldn’t quite recall. Whatever they were, they were respectable middle-class Protestants, quite different from my own parents who would have absolutely nothing in common with them.

  I constructed scenarios in my head. OK, they would go to his house after four o’ clock. But his parents would be back home by 5.30 or 6. And Stevie had to be back at our house for tea at six. So there was enough time. They probably had quite a nice little routine worked out.

  It was easy to be bitter about it. Stevie had his life, and I had mine, and they were fi
rmly separated now, and moving further apart all the time. The only evidence I had was what I saw with my own eyes. What I saw was that Stevie had changed. There was a glow about him. He moved with confidence where before there had been something hesitant and sad in his manner. But now I saw a kind of pride there. It was particularly obvious in the way he stood up to our father.

  My father had loved to niggle away at him and it had always hurt Stevie before when Dad would make a fuss about some slang phrase he used, or Stevie’s alleged laziness and inability to help our mother (in laying the fire, for instance). They were little things. And Dad would go for me in almost the same way. But he would be more cutting with Stevie. He always had been. Stevie made him more angry, and none of us were quite sure why. Perhaps he was not sure himself. After one of his dinner table outbursts we would all fall silent and the rest of the meal would be tense, the air fraught with unsaid accusations.

  The tirades continued. But Stevie had a new tactic. He would smile and say “Sorry about that” in a conversational tone halfway through my father’s lecture.

  “Wipe that smile off your fucking face,” my father would snarl.

  “Patrick,” my mother would quaver. His bad language offended her. To her credit, she always broke into the conversation, taking some of his anger at Stevie onto herself. Maybe it was deliberate. She was protective of Stevie in her way, not so much of me. But then Dad was less vicious to me. It all worked out; we knew our roles by now.

  Stevie’s composure, always remarkable, had lately become unshakable. It was as if the anger my father directed at him met some private reserve of strength. He absorbed the anger and radiated calmness. He didn’t care; more than that, he seemed totally unaffected. It just didn’t register with him anymore. He had become impervious to it.

  This frightened me, now and then, when I felt indignant on his behalf, and I realized that he no longer needed me to pick up the cudgels and defend his behavior to my father—something I had done in the past. Stevie could cope without me.

  I was no longer in his life. I really wasn’t sure how much the diary episode counted in this. Maybe it would have happened anyway, I thought. It was just a matter of time.

  I didn’t accept it. I couldn’t accept it. I kept my distance, which is what he seemed to want, but whether he thought about me or not, my thoughts were full of him, and although the few words we exchanged in the evening might not have meant a lot to him, I would comb them for any sign that he was warming to me again. Like a priest in Ancient Rome poking through dove’s entrails in the ritual of augury after the daily sacrifice, I would go over his words in my head. But the results were usually inconclusive. And my interpretation of them often seemed rather arbitrary.

  One Thursday evening in the middle of supper I asked: “How was football practice?” He looked hot and was still sweating, and my question just came out automatically. Suddenly I thought: Oh Christ. What if he skipped it? What if he skips it all week?

  He hesitated. He hadn’t gone, I realized, and I waited with resignation for the lie. It would be so easy for him to say “fine.” I stared at my plate, chopping my boiled potato in half with my knife.

  “Didn’t go,” he said. I looked up. Chewing, he added rather indistinctly: “I was over at Ron’s.”

  My father interrupted his conversation with my mother to snap: “Don’t talk with your mouth full!” and continued with it.

  It was the first time he had mentioned that name for months. I nodded. We looked at each other with complete understanding for a moment.

  “But you’re so hot, dear,” my mother said suddenly. She sometimes liked to have both ears employed in different directions at the one time.

  “That’s why I thought he was at practice,” I said. It was a fairly ordinary thing to say, but Stevie gave me a murderous glance.

  “I was out running,” he said quickly.

  “How unusual,” sneered my father. “And where were you running to?”

  “Jogging, then, if you like,” Stevie said. “I find it helps me study if I exercise in the afternoon.”

  I blushed, and tried not to smile. Stevie, calm again, gave me a quick wink. The only noise that was heard for the next few minutes was the clink of steel against plate.

  Then, laying down his knife, my father spoke.

  “What’s the idea of cutting football practice?”

  Stevie gave a sigh. “Look Dad, I’m not on the team anymore. I have to study now, as you know, and it’s taking up too much time. So I go when I want, and it’s up to me, really. Sometimes I go. Usually I do.”

  “Oh, this is news to me,” my father said sarcastically. “I was under the impression that you were still obliged to show up there three times a week. So ... running is better for the brain, is it?”

  “Yeah. You should try it.”

  Instead of blowing up Dad stared malignantly at him for a few moments. Stevie continued eating steadily, which was the correct tactic. Then Dad pushed back his chair.

  My mother, who had been following this exchange with a puzzled frown, said to him: “I don’t see what you have against it, Patrick.”

  He glared at her.

  “It’s exactly the type of poncy, upwardly-mobile form of recreation your son would choose.”

  She said nothing. The words hung in the air. He turned and stalked out, slamming the door. She shook her head.

  “Dear oh dear. He’s got worse lately. Hasn’t he? Don’t you children think he’s got a lot worse? Something must be up. Something must be on his mind.”

  I began clearing the table. Stevie stacked glasses. My mother sat staring at a St. Brigid’s cross on the wall. Whether it helped her or not I had no idea. The thought that she was silently praying made me squirm.

  It had been in some ways a predictable evening, rather worse than usual, but the eye contact between Stevie and myself had elated me. He didn’t lie, I thought happily, even though it got him into trouble. He must still like me. Maybe he’s beginning to trust me again.

  But when I got to the kitchen Stevie said moodily: “I’d better go up. I’ve got a lot to do.”

  I looked at the pile of washing-up in dismay. “You’re supposed to help me twice a week,” I said without thinking.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve got a hell of a lot to do. The pressure’s really getting to me, OK? Don’t push it.”

  I knew that he had two or three hours of studying for the Leaving ahead of him, but somehow the words “don’t push it” made me very angry.

  I turned on the radio loud. I put on an apron and some rubber gloves. I switched on the tap. The water ran into the basin. We didn’t have a dishwasher because we supposedly couldn’t afford one, and so it was my duty to clean the family dishes.

  He was still there, so I turned down the radio and looked at him enquiringly. Rubbing his cheek, he said:

  “Dad really has it in for me, doesn’t he?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He sighed. “I can’t take it much longer. The workload is dire. And for some reason he’s on my back all the time. Why can’t he just lay off? I don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe he knows,” I said, throwing some knives into the sink. He winced as they hit the side.

  “You can’t be serious.” He didn’t say, ‘Knows what?”

  “Oh, I am.”

  “He wouldn’t know unless you told him.”

  I plunged my gloved hands into the water. I couldn’t feel the heat, but watched the steam rise from the sudsy surface. So here was our conversation. We were talking. Why was it so hard to respond pleasantly?

  Not looking at him, I said:

  “Yeah. When we’re having one of our intimate conversations, you mean?”

  “All right, I know you wouldn’t.”

  I continued to scrub away. “Thanks.”

  “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  I didn’t know either. And I didn’t want to think about it.

  He walked out of the kitchen
.

  As I washed up I thought about Ron. I no longer found him attractive, and I couldn’t see why I ever had. However, from a purely detached viewpoint, I could tell that he was in excellent form. He talked more, and even had a teasingly friendly relationship with a couple of girls in my class. They thought he was really nice—so gentle and considerate. I often heard them discuss him in glowing terms as I stood at my locker. I would listen, pretending to pick through my books. But their image of him was so far away from my own that it seemed like they were talking about a different person. I liked the guy I heard them discussing. I didn’t like the person my brother had fallen for.

  * * *

  So I was back in the unenviable position of having no objects of interest. It was easy to despise my classmates, especially the boys, but the girls too. The boys seemed so stupid, and the girls were vain, and worried about their hair and make-up and who they had “got off” with last Friday night. This just meant kissing and messing around. The phrase was such a common one that I waited in vain for someone to accuse me of not having got off with anyone yet. Your status was very low if you hadn’t done that.

  Susie O’ Sullivan was busy this year changing her image. We were still friends, but I couldn’t help but see that she regarded me with some dismay and alarm. We had been friends for nearly four years, and our friendship had gone from a very close and intense form of psychological warfare to a cool, increasingly fragmented type of association.

  When I first knew Susie we were both 11 or 12, still kids really. Despite the fact that most girls in our class were becoming tall, lanky and developing breasts, Susie and I were on the shorter, chubby, shapeless end of the scale (and were set to remain so for a while). There was something boyish and teasing about Susie when I first knew her; she had short light brown hair and freckles and intensely alive blue eyes. She made me laugh, but to my surprise I also gradually discovered that her charm and spontaneity had a down side. The charm was apparent in the affectionate way she treated me. Sometimes she was just too affectionate for me to react in any way but with a stunned, inhibited silence. In fact, we didn’t communicate very well.