The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  I thought it over. And then I rushed past him. He grabbed my forearm and when I turned to face him, immediately let it go again; he really wasn’t the physical-action type.

  “Jackie,” he said. “It would be a mistake. Believe me.”

  I shook my head. “Colm, I want to know what’s going on.” Silently and miserably, he sat down again. I left the room.

  CHAPTER 25

  My first knock on Melissa and Colm’s bedroom door went unanswered. The second was met with a hissed “Go away.”

  “It’s me,” I said (as if that would help). “Let me in, Melissa. Please. I want to talk to you.”

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  At least, I thought that was what she said. By the sound of it, she had buried her head in a pillow. Her line might just as well have been “Lob me a bone” or “Lend me a throne”.

  I turned the handle – the door wasn’t locked. “No. I won’t. I’m coming in.”

  She started to protest but I had crossed the threshold before she could properly get going. I thought my unsolicited entry might set her to full-on roaring and screaming but mercifully, it had just the opposite effect. She was lying diagonally on the bed and when I stepped inside, she gave me a quick (and dirty) look before slamming her head back into the depths of her foot-thick pillow. It was a maneouvre that Chrissy had often employed in her teenage years (it was her second favourite, in fact, after the bathroom- door-slam). In Chrissy’s case, it was invariably accompanied by frantic, snotty wailing and accusations of betrayal, callousness or cold indifference; sometimes all three. Melissa, by contrast, had no follow-up to the head-slam. She just lay there, breathing so heavily that her entire body seemed to be pulsing.

  “Melissa,” I said softly, as if trying to wake her. “Come on. Sit up. Let’s have a chat.”

  She made no response, other than to shift the position of her slippered right foot by a few inches.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” I went on. “I’m sorry.” Again, nothing – not so much as a twitch.

  “Don’t you think we should talk? Or, at least, you could talk to me – tell me what I said to annoy you so badly.”

  At last, she spoke. Her voice was hoarse but calm. “Jackie, I’m not annoyed at you. Please, just leave me alone. Please. Go back down and … Just go back down.”

  If I hadn’t had my brief but highly informative chat with Colm, then I would have guessed that this was a bog- standard brush-off and would probably have become angry. Instead, I perched myself on the end of the bed and reached out to touch her ankle. She didn’t exactly recoil, but she turned her face still further into the pillow. I had two options open to me, I realised. I could feign ignorance and try to tease a revelation out of her gradually or I could tell her that I’d spoken to Colm and cut right to the chase. All things being equal, the first was obviously superior. If I could get Melissa to open up of her own accord, we would undoubtedly be on surer ground. Telling her about my conversation with her husband might lead to a screaming match and, quite apart from that, would be a horrible betrayal of his trust. I weighed it up for a few seconds and then went the potential screaming match/horrible-betrayal- of-trust route.

  “I just had a word with Colm,” I said. “He’s worried about you.”

  Melissa sniffed. “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t think you’ve been fine for a long time. I told him that I’d upset you by bringing up the subject of Mum and Dad, and … he told me something interesting.”

  She half-turned her face towards me. Her lips twitched but no words emerged. My heart-rate doubled. “He told me because he loves you and he wants to help, Melissa. Bear that in mind.”

  Now she twisted her torso in my direction and then, after grimacing ominously, sat up, curling her legs beneath her.

  “I’m all ears,” she said.

  “Well,” I began, treading carefully, “he says you were very upset when they died … and not just because of the grief.”

  Her face hardened. I tried to take a gulp of air and found that there was suddenly precious little of it in the room.

  “Melissa, have you been feeling guilty about it all this time? Tell me the truth.”

  “Guilty? Guilty about what?” “You tell me.”

  “I don’t what you’re talking about. If any of us should feel guilty, it’s you.”

  “I do feel guilty. You already know that. I’m asking you if you do too.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Jackie: guilty about what?” “About the fact that Mum and Dad were coming home from visiting you when they were killed.”

  I was shocked – absolutely astonished – at the speed with which she started to cry. It seemed that I had barely made it to the word “killed” before her eyes were red and her cheeks glistening. It was a very quiet and understated breakdown. There was no wailing, no thrashing about. Her expression barely changed. But the flow of tears was remarkable; it was as if a pair of taps had been given a half-turn.

  “What?” she managed to say.

  The word itself was all but inaudible. I lip-read it as much as heard it.

  “Have you been feeling guilty about the fact –”

  “What a thing to say …” she said dreamily. “What a silly thing to say …”

  Her eyelids rolled shut and then open again. She looked as if she’d just been hit over the head with a blunt instrument. “Colm seems to think so,” I said, wincing internally and hoping he would forgive me later. Melissa’s features rippled.

  She looked so pained.

  “Silly …” she said again and shifted her gaze to the floor. I waited to see if she had anything to add. Apparently, she had not. Thirty seconds went by. A minute. Two. More. The silence was merely tense at first. Then it became excruciating, then morbid, and finally almost comical. As the stand-off dragged on and on, I vowed repeatedly that I would not be the one to end it. I wouldn’t speak and I wouldn’t move. Not an inch. If she thought I was going to give up just like that, she could think again. I didn’t care if I had to sit there staring at her all night long. There was no way – “They’d been over a couple of days before,” she said in a low monotone.

  I almost said, “Who? When?” And then I realised that, without warning and well before I’d expected her to, she had given up the charade. I forced myself over the shock, vowing that I wouldn’t interrupt until she had unburdened herself entirely.

  “And a couple of days before that,” she went on. “And a couple of days before that again. It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen us in ages. Not that there was anything to see … just a bump. Maybe I’d have felt different afterwards if there’d been a baby to visit. But there wasn’t. Not yet. I was full of myself, that was all. The only woman in Ireland who’d ever been pregnant. Colm used to take the piss. I’d had half the country round to see it. Was I going to start charging? All that. He said he was going to put a sign up near the house. One of those big fingers pointing – This Way To The Miraculous Bump. Bad enough to have dragged them over to see something that wasn’t worth seeing and they’d already seen in any case … but I wouldn’t let them go when they wanted to. They arrived at about eight and started trying to leave before ten. You know what Dad was like. He was fine to begin with and then once he’d had a cup of tea and a chat, he was itching to go. But no. ‘We’ll have more tea,’ I said. ‘Sure it’s early yet. Ah, you will. Go on, go on.’ Mrs fucking Doyle here. I don’t think Mum was all that keen, even. We’d said everything we had to say to each other. But I insisted. And then, once the tea was gone, I went and got the scans out – again. The scans they’d already seen at least twice.”

  She paused for a moment to dry her cheeks. I forced myself to keep quiet and waited for her to start talking again, which she promptly did.

  “It was well after eleven when they left. The bottom line, the inescapable bottom line is that the man who killed them was still in the pub when they wanted to go and was out on the road when I let them go. T
here’s no way round that. I might as well have ploughed into them myself.”

  That was as much as I could take. I cast my promise to myself aside. “Melissa … I’m sure the stupidest thing I can say is that it wasn’t your fault because you know that. You must do. But I can’t think of anything else. Listen to me: It wasn’t your fault.”

  “You’re right,” she said and almost smiled. “That is a stupid thing to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t about what I know. It’s about what I feel. I know it wasn’t my fault. But I feel that it was. And you’re exactly the same way. I’ve made it my business to make sure you’re exactly the same way.”

  A couple of seconds floated by before I caught up with what she’d said.

  “You’ve made it your … What did you say?”

  “You heard me. I wanted you to feel like shit about your drunk-driving. I didn’t decide to do it, I swear to God. It just happened. I’ve been thinking about it all week and I know it’s the truth. If you felt bad, then maybe I wouldn’t … It doesn’t make sense when you say it out loud.”

  “Yes, it does,” I heard myself saying. “Deflection … or projection. Something like that. There’s a word for it.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure there is. And that’s not even the worst part.”

  I was still struggling with the current part but felt obliged to say, “Oh?”

  “Niall.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’ve damaged him. I know I have.” “What? How?”

  She attended to her cheeks again. The taps had been turned off, I noticed, which seemed like progress of a kind.

  “I was such a basket case when they died. That affects a child. All those chemicals rushing around – stress hormones. And don’t tell me that’s rubbish because I’m married to a doctor.”

  “I wasn’t going to –”

  “And I was no better when he was born. You’ve seen how he is. Episodes, tantrums, whatever the hell they are. He’s … not right. And it’s my fault.”

  She took a gulp and seemed to be on the verge of fresh tears. I stepped in quickly.

  “Melissa, I think I can help you on that score. I know exactly what’s wrong with Niall. The child …” I paused for dramatic effect. “… is spoiled rotten.”

  She shot me a look, half-sneery and half-curious. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I say. You spoil him rotten. Both of you. But mostly you. Maybe you’re over-compensating for the way you felt around the time he was born, but I’m telling you, there’s nothing wrong with that little boy that wouldn’t be put right if he got a bit of a talking-to once in a while.”

  “A talking-to?”

  “Yeah. A talking-to. Get tough with him. Tougher, anyway. He isn’t damaged. He’s just learned that the fastest way to get what he wants is by screaming and throwing things.”

  She tried to give me a how-dare-you look – but she couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “Look,” I said. “This is a conversation for a different day. Right now, let’s agree on this: Mum and Dad’s death wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t your fault. It was the van driver’s fault.”

  Her head drooped. It was much too soon for her to agree to that or at least, to voice agreement. I reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Put your shoes on.” She looked up. “Why? Where are we going?” “Shoes,” I said firmly.

  CHAPTER 26

  When I was a little girl, I had a very clear picture of what heaven looked like. It was an enormous green field, dotted here and there with the fluffiest of sheep (I had a thing for sheep back then). Because I had no idea what a soul might look like, I envisioned the inhabitants as Valentine’s Day hearts with arms and legs. I mentioned all of this to Melissa one Sunday afternoon when I was about seven. We had just come home from mass and I was in a spiritual frame of mind. Melissa, unfortunately, was not. She almost bust a gut laughing and then adopted a serious, slightly superior expression. How could heaven possibly be anything like that? she asked me. It was supposed to be perfect and everyone in it was supposed to be perfectly happy. What were they going to do all day in a big field? They couldn’t even talk to each other (I’d mentioned that my Valentine’s Day hearts lacked faces). I sulked for a while and then threw it back at her. What was her idea of heaven, if she was so smart? I didn’t think she had ever given it much thought – the answer she came up with seemed to be nothing more than the opposite of my own. Heaven, she declared, was a very busy place. Everywhere you looked, there was something exciting to do. It was like a giant fun-fair crossed with a giant sports centre crossed with a giant toy-shop. Nobody ever got bored. Everyone had a face. There were few sheep. I had to admit – to myself, not to Melissa – that her version did indeed sound more fun than mine. But the conversation got me thinking. Supposing she was right and everyone in heaven looked “just like they did on Earth”. What exactly did that mean? Did they look the way they did when they had died? Most people who died were old and wrinkly. They had bad hips and false teeth and ugly, purple veins in the backs of their hands. Surely they didn’t go to heaven looking like that? What good would a giant sports centre be to someone who’d lived and died in a wheelchair, like poor old Mrs Farrelly from across the street? And another thing: I knew from experience that fun-fairs were great crack for a while, but the thrill wore out pretty quickly. Heaven was forever. You’d get bored in the end; you were bound to. The toy-shop bit didn’t stand up either. I liked toy-shops as much as the next girl, but Mum and Dad didn’t. They seemed to prefer supermarkets and bakeries and DIY superstores. It was possible, I supposed, that heaven had a mixture of retail outlets. But if that was the case, then it had bits that some people found boring, which would mean that it wasn’t perfect after all. I thought about the problem every day for a week or more before giving up. There was no way to picture heaven that made sense. This attitude was to stay with me throughout my life. It didn’t change when my pets died. It didn’t change when my grand-parents died. And it didn’t change when the van ploughed into my mother and father’s beloved Golf, leaving it concertina’d at the edge of a ditch, looking for all the world like a controversial piece of modern art. When I stood by my my parents’ grave, which I didn’t do very often, I found myself looking not at the headstone or the flowers but at the other relatives scattered around. I imagined that they all had perfectly clear visions of heaven and saw the graves as mere memorials. Their loved ones were really somewhere up above, having a whale of a time. I found it hard to shake the feeling that mine were right in front of me.

  Late one afternoon in the second winter after the accident, I visited the graveyard, on a sudden whim. It was one of those days that starts out so murky and grim that you barely notice when the light begins to fail for real. As I picked my way through the headstones, I spoke to myself in a voice that I hadn’t used for twenty-five years: That noise was just an owl. That shape is just a tree. There was no one else around and the only sound came from the wind, which was suitably hollow and mournful. I stayed by the graveside for no more than two minutes – a new low – and then legged it back to the car, desperately trying to turn off the music in my head, which was the theme from Tales of the Unexpected. As soon as I was under the comforting streetlights again, I vowed that from now on I would only visit the cemetery at lunch-time. The idea of going there in the dead of night would have filled me with pure dread.

  But when I parked the car and killed the headlights forty minutes after leaving Ranelagh after my talk with Melissa, I felt nothing of the kind. All I felt was hope.

  Melissa pulled up alongside me and we both got out, closing our doors with a pleasing synchronicity.

  We went through the cemetery gates together and turned smoothly, like birds in flight. As I walked along the path, I found myself reciting the path to my parents’ plot in my mind – Through the gate, turn left, fourth row, fifth grave on the right; through the gate, tur
n left, fourth row, fifth grave on the right . . . It felt as familiar as the route from my kitchen to my bedroom, despite the infrequency of my visits.

  I was about to say as much to Melissa when she gasped and stopped dead. I quickly followed suit. There was activity ahead, movement, voices. We shuffled closer together, breathing heavily. Then I heard a girl’s scream, high and piercing. We shuffled closer still. But the scream was followed immediately by laughter, then by a poor imitation of a wolf’s howl. The source of the noise, we now saw, was a trio of teenagers, two boys and a girl. They were walking down the row next to my parents’. Although I saw no bottles of cider or naggins of vodka, I presumed they’d been having a sneaky drink.

  “Teenagers having fun in a graveyard at night,” I whispered. “Have they never seen a horror movie?”

  As they drew closer, I prepared to let fly with a tirade about respect and decency and the way things were done in my day. But I held my tongue, largely because I was afraid that they’d ask us what the hell we were doing there at that time of night. Instead, I merely nodded at them as they passed. Melissa did likewise. The boys nodded back; the girl said, “All right?” They stayed silent for another few steps and then started laughing again; one of them launched into the chorus of “Thriller” and the others joined in.

  Mum and Dad’s grave was plain in every way. While its immediate neighbours sported a large angel and an elaborate Celtic cross, respectively, theirs had a simple black headstone with a gentle curve at the top. Both neighbours were grassy and had miniature rose-bushes in all four corners. Mum and Dad were buried under white gravel, through which a multitude of weeds gamely poked. There was a single pot in the centre. The plant inside had seen better days – but not recently. I joined my hands in front of me and slowly read the inscription on the stone.

  In Loving Memory of Martin Flynn 1940-2002 and his Beloved Wife Theresa 1941-2002