The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  “Obviously.”

  “I mean, that’s not good news, is it?” “God, no.”

  “That’s what any normal person would think.” “Absolutely.”

  “No one in their right mind would try to look on the bright side, would they?”

  Eddie saw where I was going and this time made no reply. “Well, I did,” I said. “I’ve been … using it. To get back on good terms with people. My sister. And my son. I fell out with them both, ages ago. I’ve been deliberately using what happened to get sympathy, to get them on my side. I didn’t set out to do it. Not really. Well … maybe a bit . . .” “And what? You feel guilty about it?”

  “Yes. Guilty. And stupid. Because it didn’t work. Well, it sort of did, for a while. I got some results. But it turned out they were paper-thin. Now we’re back to square one. They’re barely talking to me. All week, I’ve been congratulating myself and now it’s …” I fought for air. “I can’t believe I actually … I actually thought … Every cloud . . .”

  There was a pause while I regained what little composure was left available to me.

  “Is that it?” Eddie said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not the worst confession I ever heard. I thought you were going to tell me something really awful.”

  I thought, I could tell you something really awful if you like. “It feels pretty bad from where I’m sitting.”

  “Listen, Jackie, in a week where you’ve caught your husband having sex with another woman, this is small potatoes. I mean … oh God! Sorry. That was supposed to sound helpful. Good man, Eddie.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not like I’d forgotten about it. I saw him this afternoon. Gerry.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I hadn’t really had a go at him before today. I was too busy scheming. But now that it’s all gone wrong, I got furious with him. I smacked him in the face. Then I went home and slashed all his clothes. Christ, it’s such a cliché. It was all I could think of at the time.”

  Eddie was clearly taken aback. “Wow. I can’t believe you hit him. I wouldn’t have had you down as the violent type.” “Neither would I. Neither would Gerry. He was stunned.”

  “He probably thought you’d got it out of your system when you vandalised his jeep.”

  I puffed out my cheeks. “I only did that, really, to get sympathy from my sister. I wanted to impress her with how upset I was.”

  “Oh.”

  “See what I mean? I’ve been a real …” I couldn’t think of a word that covered it.

  “So,” Eddie said. “Your sister, eh –” “Melissa.”

  “And your son …” “Robert.”

  “You said they’re barely talking to you now. How come?” I shifted sideways in my seat and crossed my legs. But I didn’t feel any more comfortable. I undid the move. “My best friend Nancy was away for a few days. She came back last night and I stayed over at hers. Melissa’s raging. She thinks I used her house like a hotel while I had no other option and then dropped her when I had. And she’s half- right. If Nancy had been around, I probably would have gone to her first. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I could do some … healing, I suppose you’d call it … with Melissa.” “Right. And Robert? What happened there?”

  I made a noise with my lips. “He was nice to me for about ten minutes after he heard about Gerry. But he’s had some problems of his own the last couple of days. And now that he’s got distracted, it’s like nothing ever happened. He’s treating me like dirt again.”

  “What kind of problems? Your-fault kind of problems?” “No. Gerry’s fault. Robert ran into Lisa and there was … trouble. In a club. It was all over The Sun. Front page.” “Eh? It was in the papers? Must have been big trouble.” “Well, because of The O’Mahonys and all.”

  “What’s The O’Mahonys got to do with it?”

  “What do you mean? Robert’s in it. He’s Valentine Reilly.”

  Eddie’s mouth formed an O. “You’re joking me!”

  “What? Did you not know that? You must have heard me talking about it at work.”

  He shook his head. “Never. Not once.” “Are you sure?”

  “I’d have remembered something like that, Jackie.” “Oh. Well I’m sure I mentioned it to Veronica at least.” I thought about it and realised that I hadn’t done that very often either. “Anyway, he could be in a bit of bother with RTÉ. He’s furious at Gerry and he seems to have just … lost interest in being nice to me. Again. I should have known it wouldn’t last. He’s had no time for me for years.”

  “What happened between you in the first place? And you and Melissa, for that matter.”

  My shoulders tensed. “There’s no point in getting into it, Eddie. It’s not important.”

  “You did say you wanted to talk …”

  There was no anger in his voice – just alarm. I could tell that he wasn’t happy with merely listening. He really wanted to help.

  “Okay. But I don’t think it’ll make any difference.” He brightened up. “You never know.”

  “With Melissa, I can tell you what happened in a few words. Remember in the café, I told you that my parents were killed in a car crash?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, about a month before that I got banned for drink driving. And the guy who hit my parents was drunk. As far as Melissa was concerned, I might as well have killed them myself. The End.”

  Eddie took a moment to respond. “That’s awful.” “Which bit?”

  “All of it.” “Yeah.”

  “But you didn’t kill your parents.”

  “I know that, Eddie. Try telling Melissa. Driving drunk was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I think about it all the time. Every day of the week. The part that really got to me …” I closed my eyes in shame. “The part that really got to me was that I didn’t even have to get in the car. It was completely unnecessary. I was leaving a DVD back.”

  Eddie made a sudden involuntary noise, as if someone had dropped an ice-cube down his back. “That was stupid,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you it wasn’t. But you learned the lesson, I’m sure.”

  “Definitely. Definitely.”

  We stared at the scones for a while.

  “What about Robert? What happened there?”

  I tossed my head back. “Who knows? He just turned into a nightmare at the end of his school days.”

  “What, cheeky?”

  “Cheeky doesn’t begin to cover it. He’d take my head off as soon I opened my gob. No one else – just me.”

  “Why was that, do you think?” “Dunno.”

  “Were you giving him a hard time?”

  “Not particularly, although there was a lot to give him a hard time about.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, apart from the cheek, there was his unbelievable messiness, his clothes, this awful friend he had at the time, the music he had blaring all hours of the day and night –”

  “But he was a teenager, wasn’t he? Isn’t that all par for the course?”

  A little bubble of anger rose up in me. “That’s what Melissa said,” I scowled. “She called me a nag. So did Nancy, more or less.”

  Eddie gave a little cough. “Maybe you were being a bit of a … I mean, just a wee bit –”

  “That wasn’t all. He was smoking hash, he had no interest in school, he left a mess everywhere –”

  “You said that one already.”

  “He never said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, he never left the bins out when I asked him because he knew I’d wind up doing it if he waited long enough, he never left his DVDs back either, for the same reason, he never –”

  Eddie pointed his finger at me. “Jackie.” “What?”

  “DVDs.”

  “What about them?”

  “You said you were leaving a DVD back when you got arrested. Was it one of Robert’s?”

  The anger bubble grew again and then popped; I almost heard it.
/>
  “Yes.”

  Eddie lowered the finger and raised an eyebrow. “So what?” I said, but I knew. I knew what.

  “When was your drink-driving thing?” “Four years ago.”

  “You and Robert fell out at the end of his schooldays, you said. When was that?”

  “It was about … It was about four years ago.” “You don’t think maybe there’s a link?”

  I didn’t reply; I couldn’t. My voice had stopped working. “You must do,” Eddie went on. “You get caught driving drunk, then your parents are killed by a drunk driver and your sister drops you. It must have been horrible. Do you not think that maybe you started harbouring a grudge against Robert? Because it was his DVD?”

  I forced my mouth to open. “It wasn’t Robert’s fault,” I said robotically. “It was my fault. No one else’s.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. But still, you’ve gotta admit, it’s a bit of a co–”

  “I have to go,” I said and bolted.

  I was halfway out the front door before Eddie made it into the hall.

  CHAPTER 24

  Robert sounded quite cheery when he answered the intercom at his apartment.

  “Robert,” I said. “It’s me. Mum. Can I come in?”

  The cheeriness disappeared. “It’s not a good time. My mate’s here.”

  “Please, Robert. Please.” “Can it not wait, we’re –”

  “I’m begging you. It’s important.”

  There was a pause. He mumbled something. Then the door clicked open.

  “Thank you,” I said, but he’d already hung up.

  Inside, I heard laughter as I approached his apartment. When I knocked on the door, the laughter stopped briefly, then started again. It tapered off, slowly this time.

  Finally, Robert opened up. “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi.” He turned, leaving the door open.

  I stepped inside and closed it behind me. There were empty beer cans, at least a dozen of them, on the coffee table. The air was thick with smoke. A young man I’d never seen before was sitting on the sofa. He was wearing a multicoloured beanie and a duffel coat, even though the room was stifling warm.

  “Hello there,” he said.

  “This is Bogie,” Robert muttered. “Bogie – my mother.”

  Bogie rose from the sofa. He was ludicrously tall, six-four at least.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs O’Connell,” he said and offered his hand.

  “You too, eh … Bogie,” I said and shook.

  Bogie turned to Robert. “She doesn’t seem all that frightening to me.”

  Robert rolled his eyes. Bogie turned back to me and gently punched me on the shoulder. “I’m only messing with you. Will you have a beer?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “Actually … would you mind very much if I had a word with Robert in private for a moment?”

  Bogie said, “No problem” just as Robert said, “For fuck’s sake!”

  “I’m sorry, Robert,” I said. “I know it’s your place and all –” “Damn right it’s my place,” he snarled. “You can’t march in here –”

  “It’s all right,” Bogie said, raising his hands. “I’ll run up to the shop, get a few nibbles.”

  “You don’t have to go on her account,” Robert said, but Bogie was already moving to the door.

  “Good luck now,” he said as he departed.

  Robert stared at me. I could see his chest rising and falling. “You sounded like you were in pretty good form,” I said.

  “Before I got here. Did something happen with RTÉ?”

  He stared on for another couple of seconds before answering. “We had a meeting. I got my wrist slapped. Not too hard. No such thing as bad publicity.”

  “What about the other guy? Is he still going to sue?” “Don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Nothing I can do about it, is there?”

  “So … does this mean you’re not going to cut your dad off?”

  “Huh. I was already speaking to him.” “Oh?”

  “He rang this afternoon. Very upset. Said you clocked him one.”

  I didn’t want to get into details on that score. “True. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  He gestured to the sofa sarcastically, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. “Help yourself.”

  I sat. “Come here. Please.”

  He groaned and dragged himself across the room to sit beside me. I looked into his eyes. He looked away.

  “I suppose you think that was typical,” I said. “Me and Bogie.”

  “Ohhh, yes. Absolutely.” “You think I’m a nag.”

  He picked at his jeans. “Do you want the truth?” “Yes.”

  “Yes, then. I do.”

  “I’m always giving out to you?” “Yes.”

  “Complaining?” “Yes.”

  “Finding fault?” “Yes.”

  “Would you believe me if I swore I would never do any of those things again?”

  He looked at me. “Probably not.”

  I reached out and took his hand. He didn’t snap it away, but his fingers went limp and lifeless.

  “Robert,” I said. “Do you remember renting The Mask of Zorro?”

  On the drive over to the apartment, I’d imagined that he would react to what I had to say with extreme anger. I would be telling him, after all, that I’d had the hump with him for a period of years because of something that he hadn’t done on purpose – hadn’t done at all, in fact. It would be tricky, I knew, but I allowed myself to hope that I’d be able to talk him down from his rage over the course of a few days – or weeks or months, if that was what it took. I would bombard him with apologetic phone calls and visits. I would grovel. I would beg. I would buy him stuff.

  It was a considerable shock, then, when I finished speaking (my head hung low, my eyes half-closed in shame) and he said, “You’re fucking joking me.” The shock wasn’t in his choice of opener; it was in his delivery. There was no anger, no malice, no disgust. There was only surprise.

  To my astonishment, the words “Language, Robert” formed on my lips. I left them there.

  “I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am,” I said weakly. “I know that’s a pathetic thing to say. I know it doesn’t –”

  “And, what? You’ve just worked this out?” Again, the tone was merely curious.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these last few days and … yes, I’ve just worked it out.”

  I hoped he wouldn’t question me any further on this specific point. Bad enough that I had to admit to such a thing without having to declare that it had come to me as news from a third-party.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I’ve been kidding myself for years that the problem was with you, with your behaviour. But no. It’s me. It’s been me all along. Looking for reasons to be mad at you. Hence the … nagging.”

  He thought for a moment then moved on to a different element of my news. “Drunk driving … I can’t get my head round it. I knew there was something weird going on around then. It wasn’t just the mood you were in. It was the staying out of the car – the walking everywhere. The health kick or whatever you called it. We used to talk about it, Chrissy and me. You know what we came up with?”

  I shook my head.

  “We thought you had a disease,” he said. “You’d got some sort of terrible news from the doctor, a heart condition or something, and you were trying, too late, to get some exercise. It wasn’t a bad theory, really. It also explained why you were being such a fucking wasp.”

  “Nope. Nothing like that. The whole walking thing was … comical, I suppose. Ridiculous. I didn’t just walk to the shops or places I had to go to. I didn’t think that was believable enough. So I used to go out in the evenings too, remember? In my new runners and all. Made a big deal of making sure you and Chrissy saw me heading off.”

  “That’s right, yeah. Jesus. I never knew you could be so … devious.”

  My mouth went dry. “I try not
to make a habit of it.” Nothing more was said for a few moments.

  Then Robert asked, “So … were you already mad at me before Granny and Granda were killed? Or did you get mad afterwards?”

  “Well, I wasn’t aware of being mad you at all. But I suppose it was both. I was already mad and then it got much worse. It was a horrible few months, Robert. It would have been horrible even if the two things had been separate. But to have them linked up like that … I was all over the place.” He nodded. “Maybe that’s why you got that bloody job.

  Or part of the reason anyway.”

  “My job? What’s that got to do with it?”

  He popped a shoulder. “Just wondering. I’ve never understood it. You obviously don’t like it. Which is fair enough. Sounds bloody tedious to me. You don’t need the money, do you?”

  “No. Not really. It comes in handy, definitely. But that’s not why I started there.”

  “Why, then?”

  “It seemed like a good idea, that’s all. You kids were finishing school. I’d never had a real job, ever. I wanted something to do, I suppose. A new identity.”

  That was what I’d always told myself. But now that I thought about it, Robert seemed to have a point. Maybe it was just part of the larger crisis. It and the other thing.

  “Then there was Jonathon Mullen,” said Robert.

  My knees knocked together. Was he reading minds now? “Sorry?”

  “That was around then as well. And you got very involved there, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, mouse-like.

  “I mean, you took it badly. I know he got better and all, but still. That’s fucking hard to watch. A sick child.”

  I nodded for all I was worth. “That’s true. It was tough.” In my desperation to change the subject, I blurted out, “And there was something else.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your Auntie Melissa and I fell out after Mum and Dad died.”

  “I know that. Over the wills.”

  “No. Not over the wills. Over my drink-driving. I told her about it. She wasn’t impressed, obviously, but she wasn’t particularly bothered. Then Mum and Dad …”