Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  She shook her head, uncaring that tears were gathering in her eyes with the force of an impending storm. “If that were true Brian, we wouldn’t be here together now, would we? It was all meant for Ireland,” she said and even twenty years after Brendan’s death the bitterness tasted like poison on her tongue, “oh yes all meant for a goddamn country that loved him enough to kill him like a dog in the street. All meant for Ireland and not a drop left over for you and me, Brian. Not a drop, parched and dying from thirst but not a goddamn drop.” Other diners were staring as her voice rose and the maitre’d looked slightly horrified, but Brian merely gave a cool glance around the room and people turned back to their meals shamefaced and without appetite.

  “I’ll take you home, Peg,” he said and had sounded so much like his father that she’d wanted to slap him, call him a faithless bastard and take him to bed all in one go. Instead she followed quietly, tears slipping silently down her face, destroying the meticulous maquillage of a forty-five year old woman.

  He took her home, but he didn’t leave her the way she had been certain he would. They sat in the garden and he talked to her in such a low and gentle voice that she thought she would go mad if he didn’t touch her. Touch her as a man, not a boy. He told her his story about the man he’d known, the father he’d loved and at times hated for his strength and his death, which Brian had struggled not to see as deliberate on Brendan’s part.

  She was later to think how funny it was that gardens often played a part in the downfall of man, or woman as the case may be. How five minutes of madness in a lilac drenched patch could forever alter the constructs of a life.

  Before the madness struck, he took her hands in one of his and wiped her face gently with a cloth in his other.

  “I must look a dreadful sight,” she said, profoundly and wearily meaning it, not looking for pretty denials as she would have years ago.

  “No, no you don’t,” he said and the look on his face had been enough to make her move away from him to stand under the overarching lilac branches, heavy and swollen from a sudden rain. He followed, as she must have known he would.

  “I’m not my father,” he said simply and she whispered, “I know Brian, I know too well.” And then of course, he kissed her, softly, achingly, arching her back into it. Her body, so long dormant, leaped like a tightly strung bow to his touch. She felt on fire at once and responded like a woman whose death sentence has just been removed. She never knew later, or perhaps she just didn’t want to know, who removed whose clothing, she would remember only the touch of his hands sure and hard on her breasts and how she breathed in sharply at the sight of his body half-bared to her. It was madness, but an irresistible insanity, that made her laugh as his hands, his fine, young hands slid down over her hips, lifted her, settled her so that her back would have scratches and long bloody scrapes for weeks after from the rough bark of Arthur’s much loved lilac trees. And then just as suddenly she knew Brendan was there, that his hands touched her as they had in so many painful dreams, painful for the waking, not for the dreaming. It was Brendan whose breath came hard upon her neck, Brendan’s hands cupping her hips, Brendan’s teeth and tongue upon her breasts, Brendan inside of her and the knowledge, longed for, hungered and ached and tossed and turned for through endless agonies of nights, the knowledge left her cold. She pushed him away and saw him in the moonlight, stunned and hollow-eyed before she covered her face with her hands and began to weep in a way that had nothing to do with tears.

  “I—oh Christ—I—for a minute I thought...” he trailed off as he saw her face and she knew that he had felt it too, had felt his father enter his body, his blood and push him aside to have the woman he’d burned for in life and it would seem, even in death.

  She felt sickened and ashamed and leaned down to pick up her dress, crumpled and sodden with dew, a dress that, even if it hadn’t been ruined, she would never have worn again. As she straightened up, she caught a flicker of gray in the corner of her eye and stood to see Arthur standing at the entrance to the garden, his face ashen behind a mist of filmy apricot roses. Brian turned then, sensing a watcher behind him, and gave Arthur the small dignity of looking him in the eyes, before bending to retrieve his own fallen attire and shrugging into its drenched shell.

  She didn’t know how long she might have stood there watching Arthur turn to dust, watching him fall and crumple and die though he never moved an inch, perhaps forever if there hadn’t suddenly been a vicious rush across the space that separated them and the whirling eddy of adolescent fists flailing at her naked body and a voice, shrill with betrayal and blood-hate, screaming ‘filthy Irish whore’ at her. Her son, calling her a whore, while his father stood like a statue by the gate and she welcoming the blows that rained down and bruised her in ways that would never show on her skin. It was Brian who stopped him, Brian who pinned his arms at his sides and bodily moved him over to his father and then gently told Arthur that it would be best to take the boy inside and that Peg would be in shortly.

  Arthur seemed almost grateful to be instructed what to do. He nodded at Brian and without a backwards glance herded Siddy into the house. Siddy, who followed quietly enough after spitting in Brian’s face.

  Brian calmly wiped his face and then came to Peg, helped her into her clothes and gently kissed her on the forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply and she was grateful that no embarrassment tinged his words. He looked so young standing there in the moonlight and yet a full man, apologizing for nearly making love to his father’s old mistress. It struck her as ludicrous and she began to laugh, hysterically, nauseated with misery, and acutely pained by the thought that she could never so much as lay eyes on this man again. When it seemed that she might never stop, Brian took her head hard in his hands and said ‘no more’ sharply. She stopped.

  “Will it be better if I stay or go?” he asked and she was touched by his youthful bravado.

  “Go,” she whispered, “Arthur has been hurt enough tonight; I can’t make him stand under his own roof with you. Go Brian. Go home. He won’t hurt me,” she added, seeing that he was uncertain of leaving her to cope alone. And if he does, she thought silently to herself, it’ll be much less than I deserve.

  He had gone, into the night. Without promises, without any more words and she had been old enough to be grateful for it.

  Siddy had barricaded himself in his room and would not come out and she was too weary to try very long to persuade him. She went to the kitchen and saw that Arthur had put the roses he’d brought her into a vase, carefully filled with warm water. It was very like him, even in moments of great pain, not to punish an innocent flower for its mere presence. She stayed in the kitchen for awhile, cleaned the already gleaming sink and counters, then rinsed the wine glass she’d used before taking Brian out and carefully folded it in a linen napkin, then went into the downstairs bath and removed her makeup, changed into a velvet, apricot robe Arthur had given her on her last birthday and balled up the stockings, underpants, brassiere and dress she’d worn and tucking them under one arm took them out through the kitchen where she collected the wineglass and then took the lot of it to the outside trash bin, which she then lugged to the street. They would come and take it away in the morning. It would be too late but at least she would never have to look at the damn dress again.

  Arthur was in their bedroom, carefully folding his clothes into a suitcase.

  “I’m not leaving,” he said calmly, “I won’t give you the satisfaction. However, I do think it best if I take Sidney away from here for a few days. It’s likely to be unpleasant around here for a bit and he doesn’t deserve to be a part of that.”

  “No, no he doesn’t,” she found herself calmly agreeing. She was relieved actually; cowardice or not she really couldn’t bear Siddy’s self-righteous anger at present. “Where will you take him?” she asked, as if inquiring about a seaside jaunt.

  “To Scotland
, Laura will be happy enough to take him; he can finish out the term there. I’ve already called and she’ll make up the spare room for him.”

  “He’ll hate it,” Peg said softly, “you know what he thinks of the state school system.”

  Arthur took a deep breath and she noticed how tightly he gripped the sides of the suitcase, “At present, Margaret, I can’t say I much care about the wishes of a spoiled, pompous little boy. Perhaps his cousins will knock some of it out of him. It’d do him no end of good.”

  She’d given a sharp gasp of laughter more from shock than amusement and he looked at her wearily as though she were just one more disobedient, headstrong child that he had to deal with.

  He was gone four days, time enough to settle Siddy in with his wild pack of Scottish cousins and register him at the local school. He arrived home on the evening of the fifth day, obviously exhausted.

  “What did you tell Laura?” Peg asked as he poured himself his regulation two fingers of scotch and then looked disconsolately at the glass and poured two more.

  “That you didn’t feel well,” he said and took his scotch and went upstairs to have a bath. She made him a light meal, the only sort of cooking she’d ever developed skill at and he ate it quietly while thumbing through the day’s paper. He was acting so perfectly normal, so perfectly Arthur that she wanted to scream at him to hit her, break the dishes or walk out the door. But then, to be fair, what had she expected? A madman to come flying back from the north, ready to rant and rave and drag her about by the hair? It was inconceivable and simply not in his nature regardless of the depth of his pain. He was, in the finest and most out-of-date manner, a true gentleman.

  After full dark, when the air cooled and the scent of the lilacs seemed to pour through the windows and steal across carpets and rooms, she went upstairs to find him gathering his things, pyjamas, toiletries, pillow, suits, socks, underwear and removing them to the downstairs bedroom.

  “Arthur you don’t have to do this,” she said, a tearing loss within her that she’d never thought this man could make her feel.

  “I don’t really see any other possibility Peg, I cannot share this room,” he looked sadly around, “nor this lie of a marriage bed.”

  “I’ll go,” she said desperately, “I’ll move downstairs or out completely if that’s what you want.”

  He shook his head, “No, I’d still smell your perfume on the air and feel your absence in that bed. If you want to move out Peg that’s your choice, it always has been.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” she asked, fear squeezing her heart so tightly she thought surely it would stop.

  “No, Peg, fool that I am, I do not want you to leave, I’ll never want that regardless of how much you grow to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Arthur,” she said but he did not reply. It had taken several trips to remove all his things from the bedroom, when he was done it seemed lopsided in the room, lopsided and very empty. On the last trip, as he gathered small mementos, he stopped and sat down on the bed and finally looked at her standing helplessly in the middle of the pretty Persian carpet they’d ludicrously overpaid for in a bazaar in Turkey.

  “Who was he, Peg? Who was he, this man that has lived with us all these years but never shown his face, dear God Peggy, who was he?”

  She took a long moment to answer, afraid suddenly of conjuring the very ghost she’d sought to raise for years.

  “His name was Brendan,” she whispered and felt her own words come back and echo tinnily about the empty room.

  “I know his name, Peg,” Arthur said, “you’ve cried it often enough in your sleep. I want to know who he was and why you’ve never been able to live without him.”

  “Maybe if he’d lived I could have,” she said, “maybe if he’d lived I’d have been a good wife to you or maybe I wasn’t ever going to be good for anyone whether he’d been on this earth or not. Who’s to say?” She felt very exhausted suddenly and went to sit on the bed beside Arthur. “He was everything and when he died I was nothing and that’s what you got in me Arthur, nothing.”

  Arthur sighed, his hands lying flat on the bed’s white coverlet, a bit of stray light catching and sparking off of his worn wedding band.

  “The first time I saw you Margaret, the first time I thought I’d die just from the sheer shock of how beautiful you were. I loved you right then, I’d never known I was capable of that sort of feeling and I thought you were my moment of wonderful on this planet. I believed that I could love enough for two and that eventually my patience would win you over. Every once in awhile I was fool enough to think that it had. I remember everything about that first day, how you looked and how the light hit your face, how completely and utterly lost you seemed. I thought I could save you from yourself but I couldn’t.”

  “The time for my redemption is long passed Arthur,” she said and believed it.

  “I know you’ve never really loved me Peg, but what about Siddy, did you ever really care for him?”

  She winced; it had been a very direct blow he’d dealt her.

  “Aye, I loved him in spite of my best efforts not to. I will always love him but I’ll never be the right mother for him.”

  “I was disappointed when he was born, you know,” Arthur said and Peg felt herself go still with shock, Arthur had been both mother and father to Siddy for the first few months of his life, due to a black depression on her own part. He had never expressed anything but delight in him, delight, approval and unswerving love.

  “I never knew,” she said, “why?”

  “Because I wanted a little girl,” Arthur said, “I wanted a little you, a little redheaded wild girl that I could love and spoil shamelessly. When you were pregnant, I’d imagine her lying there inside your body and she grew for me from this tiny, silent water creature, glowing like a pearl, to a young woman who looked like flame when she moved and all the dreams I invented in between, the parties and the horse I’d give her on her seventh birthday, the schools and dresses and when the boys started coming around I’d disapprove of them all until I found one that would treat her like the queen that she was. And then Siddy was born and suddenly all those dreams turned to ashes and he was so much like me, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. I even had a name for her you know.”

  She touched his shoulder and felt him shudder at the contact of her hand on his flesh. “What was it?”

  “Julia,” he replied and sounded like a very old man.

  “I’m sorry Arthur, I really am. I wish I could have given you your daughter.”

  He nodded but she couldn’t see whether he believed her or not.

  “I think maybe, Margaret, that I just wanted to see love and approval coming out of a pair of eyes that were just like yours.” He stood and faced her in the unforgiving light that spilled in from the hallway, “I always knew when we made love that you imagined I was someone else and after the first months of our marriage I even knew his name. And I knew it was the only way you could find any fulfillment in my arms. Did you have to pretend with that boy in the garden Peg? Or was he enough all by himself?”

  “Don’t Arthur, it was the only time and I—I hardly know what happened.”

  “Nice looking young man,” Arthur said his voice brittle and dry as old bones, “does he look like your Brendan, does he remind you?”

  She lifted her face up to him, knowing her age had settled upon her tonight with a vengeance, “He is his son.”

  “I see,” he said and turned his back on her to make his way slowly downstairs. In the seven years which were all that was left of his life, he would never enter their bedroom again. He would never touch her body again, except for one dark night when he could not bear to be alone with his pain any longer.

  In the morning he chopped down the lilac bushes and burned them, and when it was done he came in, had his tea and went into the office. He never said a
nother word to her about what he’d seen that night in his garden.

  For a man that had lived such a well-ordered and tidy existence Arthur had a very messy death. Messy, long and dreadfully painful. Two Aprils after the one when he ceased to be her husband, he was diagnosed with cancer. It took five years to kill him. And in those five years Peg had been nurse, mother, sister and best friend to him. They’d finally had a marriage, one that she managed to find fulfillment and love in. They occupied the bottom floor of the house together, Arthur unable to climb the stairs after the third year of his illness and she having no desire to roam the empty rooms upstairs like a ghost. Siddy had never come home again, he’d finished out his schooling in Scotland and then matriculated up to Cambridge. Arthur went to see him at vacation time and after a few thwarted attempts, he’d not mentioned Siddy’s mother to him again. Peg knew that in the world Siddy inhabited she no longer existed and thought that perhaps it was for the best. He came to see his father in his illness but only when Peg was out doing the few errands that she did.

  Arthur died in April and there was a certain poetic irony in that, which she could not miss. For she knew she’d killed him seven years before on an April night in a lilac-drenched, moon-ridden garden. He died with her by his side in the depths of the night. He’d asked her to open the windows and let the breeze in only an hour before and the room had filled at once with the perfume of the neighbor’s flowers and he, generous to the bitter end, turned slowly, agonizingly and looking her full in the eyes said, ‘You were my moment of wonderful, Margaret, you really were.’ She had cried after that, cried in her husband’s arms as she should have years before and Arthur died that way, trying to comfort a woman who had only lately become his wife.

  Siddy avoided her at the funeral and sat in stony silence at the reading of the will. His father’s estate was meticulously ordered and surprisingly large. Both his wife and son were well taken care of.