The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  Requiescat In Pace

  Sometimes I thought that I expected it to change – that one day there’d be new information to report, or perhaps that some old information would be added: Martin worked as an electrician or Theresa was smarter than she let on. The last line of the inscription had caused some friction – some extra friction – between Melissa and me. I’d argued that the full Latin looked pretentious. Melissa had thought it looked dignified. She’d won out, in the end, because I simply gave up. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But it annoyed me every time I saw it. On the other hand, the gravel annoyed me too and that had been my idea. “Less trouble,” I’d said. “Easier to keep. If we get grass, we’ll have to be out here every week in the summer.” Melissa had quickly agreed. Less trouble was good. Easier to keep was good. Fewer visits was good.

  I once asked Gerry what he did when he came to see his own parents’ grave, which was on the far side of the same cemetery. The question embarrassed him, but he answered it anyway. He said he chatted to them, told them his news. I was astonished. Gerry had never really seen eye to eye with his mother and he was still in nappies when his father died of a massive heart attack. I said as much; Gerry looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. What did it matter if he’d never known his dad and hadn’t been close to his mum? They were dead. They couldn’t answer him, could they? He talked to them because it helped him to get his ducks in a row in his head – to see where he was coming from and where he was going to. It was something to do besides reciting prayers, which he knew was boring and suspected was pointless. (I followed up by asking him if he had a clear image of heaven. He answered the question with a question: had I been sniffing glue?) I’d tried to copy his example myself, a couple of times. But I’d just felt silly and had gone back to what I was used to – reading the headstone and feeling empty. Tonight, perhaps, would be third time lucky. I closed my eyes and brought my parents’ faces to mind. Then I lowered my chin and thought about those strange and terrible months almost four years ago. The images swirled and tilted, fell into and out of sequence. The Guard on the street saying: “Blow into this for me, love.” The Guard at the door saying: “Prepare yourself for a shock.” Melissa avoiding my gaze. Robert rolling his eyes. Chrissy biting a fingernail. Gerry slamming a door. Tony kissing my tummy. Then I thought about more recent events. Gerry and Lisa in the front room. Melissa greeting me at her door. Chrissy denouncing her father. Robert giving me a hug. Melissa crying on her bed.

  It was a while before I managed to frame my opening bit of chat. This is what I came up with: Mum? Dad? Hello. It’s been a while. I’d no sooner thought that thought than Melissa spoke up for the first time since we’d arrived.

  “It doesn’t look too good, does it?” she said. “No.”

  “Uncared for …” “Well ….” “Neglected, then.” “Yeah. Neglected.”

  She became lost in thought for a moment. Then she said, “You know what I’ve just realised? Apart from the funeral, this is the first time you and I have been here together. The very first time …”

  I reached out in the darkness and took her hand. “That,” I told her, “is the whole point.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I didn’t stay in Melissa’s that night. I went home.

  Twenty metres from the house, I took my foot off the accelerator and allowed the car to coast, as was my habit. There were no lights on inside. I pictured Gerry in the foetal position right in the centre of the bed, gently shivering as he caressed his wounded cheek. Then I realised that his jeep was nowhere to be seen. I parked in the drive and let myself in. Everything seemed to be just as I had left it. The ruins of the Cross-eyed Busker hadn’t been disturbed. There was no new rubbish teetering atop the kitchen bin. Upstairs, however, I found a clue. The pile of slashed clothes was exactly where I had left it – but the plug had been removed from the sink in the en suite. The Walkman was still sitting there, its surface beaded with water; he hadn’t even bothered lifting it out. I shuddered at the feebleness of my Angry Wife tactics.

  Downstairs, I made myself a cup of tea, then sat at the kitchen table and didn’t drink it. I looked at the wall clock. It was half past eleven. I very much doubted that Gerry was out drowning his sorrows. His interest in drinking had started to wane when he was in his early thirties. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him drunk. And besides, he wasn’t the sorrow-drowning type. Alcohol had always been a social lubricant to him, at best; it was never medicinal. He could have been visiting someone, I supposed, but that seemed just as unlikely. Although Gerry had several close friends, I couldn’t see him calling around to any of them late at night to pour his heart out. He wasn’t the type for that either. I flicked the edge of my cup with a fingernail and rested my chin on my hand. And then my mobile rang. It was Chrissy. As soon as I answered, I could tell that she was upset about something.

  “Chrissy?” I said. “Are you all right? “Hi. Yeah, sort of. I’m … I’m fine.” “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer. I heard a muffled ruckus of some kind. My heart raced. “Hello? Hello?”

  Her voice returned. “Yeah, I’m here, hang on.” More muffled ruckus. I heard her say, “Go back in, I’ll be with you in a minute.” Then: “Mum?”

  “What is it?”

  She breathed down the line. “Dad’s here.” “Is he?”

  “He was on the front doorstep when I came in from work.

  Miserable. Babbling.”

  I fought hard to keep the smile out of my voice. “And you took him in … “

  “I certainly did not. I walked right past him.” “Ah, Chrissy …”

  “But a while later some eejit held the front door for him. He started babbling outside the apartment then.”

  I tried again. “And you took him in …”

  “It was embarrassing, that’s all. I could hear people sticking their heads out into the corridor for a look. He says you punched him in the face.”

  “Slapped,” I said. “I slapped him in the face.”

  “And wrecked his clothes. And his Walkman. And the Cross-eyed Busker.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “About time too. He’s in bits in there. ‘I’m a bloody fool, I don’t deserve to live, blah blah blah!’. Same old shite. I don’t know what to do with him. He says he can’t go back to the house – he wants to stay here for the night. Jesus.”

  “But you’re talking? The two of you are talking?”

  “Don’t get excited. I haven’t really got much choice in the matter, have I?”

  “It’s a start,” I said.

  There was an unpleasant pause. “I just don’t get you, Mum. I really don’t. After the way that man –”

  “Let’s not get into it now. Please.”

  I thought quickly. My conversation with Gerry could wait. It was more important that he and Chrissy made some sort of headway while the going was good.

  “Are you going to let him stay?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “That’s why I’m ringing you. Can you talk him into leaving? Please? If I was fit to lift him and throw him out, I would have done it by now.”

  “No,” I said, immediately and firmly. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no, Chrissy. I’m not doing that.”

  She sighed so hard the phone line crackled. “Fine then. I’ll go and stay on someone’s floor for the night. Maybe I’ll join you at Melissa’s, she’s got nice thick carpets …”

  This was an empty threat, I was sure of it. Chrissy hated any kind of discomfort, however temporary. The threat – the entire phone-call – was a last roll of the dice. I didn’t bother pointing out that my stay at her aunt’s was over. The news that I was close by would only add fuel to her fire.

  “It’s up to you,” I said and let the words dangle. She made no reply.

  “Okay then,” I said with an air of finality. “Go on back to him. Tell him you were ringing one of your pals or something.
And try to be nice.”

  “I have no intention of being nice,” she said.

  I didn’t push it. The ball was rolling and that was enough. We said goodnight and hung up.

  * * *

  About a fortnight after Tony and I slept together (to use the TV way of putting it; there was, of course, no sleeping involved), I started hassling Gerry for a new bed. He didn’t put up much of a struggle; luckily for me, we’d had our current one for fifteen years, and it showed. I was sure that the sickly, sweaty feeling that had engulfed me when I lay down every night would vanish as soon as the swap was made, but I was wrong. The problem, it turned out, was not the bed but the room itself. It took many months for me to stop thinking of it as a crime-scene. Even then, no matter how hard I wiped and scrubbed and dusted – it was the cleanest room in the house, by far – I was never able to shake the feeling that it was indelibly tainted. For some reason, it never bothered me during the day, even though that was when Tony and I had committed our sin. I could only guess that the guilt became stronger when I was in there alone with Gerry, lying side by side, oblivious husband and callous wife. When I got off the phone from Chrissy that night, I decided to hit the sack straight away. As soon as I walked through the bedroom door, I noticed that the space felt different, more comfortable than usual – this, despite the pile of sabotaged clothes on the floor and the damp and useless Walkman in the en suite. I got myself ready in record time and dived under the crumpled duvet.

  It was probably a good thing, I told myself, that I wouldn’t be seeing Gerry straight away. Even though I knew now what I wanted to say to him, the extra thinking time would be useful. The ideas and sentiments were all in place – but the words were not. I thought about Tony too, about how strange it had been in those few months between our encounter and his move to Galway. It had been hard to pretend that nothing untoward had happened while knowing that he was sleeping on the other side of the wall. And now Lisa was in there, laughing it up with her boyfriend for all I knew. I made myself think about her, forced myself to, and still I couldn’t raise any strong feelings towards her. She was a non-person to me, a sort of silhouette.

  Sleep crept up on me surprisingly quickly. As it did so, an idea lodged in my tired mind and refused all of my efforts to shift it. My last waking thought was that before I spoke to my husband, I had one more visit to make.

  CHAPTER 28

  I woke early on Friday morning, and was pulling out of the drive within twenty minutes of opening my eyes. Gerry might well have been going to work straight from Chrissy’s, I thought, but I didn’t want to take the chance of bumping into him. Traffic out of Ashbourne was heavy, even though it was not yet eight o’clock, and only worsened as I approached the M50. Every morning during my commute to First Premier, I heard the horror stories on the radio and thanked God that I didn’t have to go near that particular stretch of motorway. Still, I was totally unprepared for the scene that confronted me when I finally joined it. The phrases that I’d heard so many times in the traffic reports – It’s bumper-to- bumper, It’s choc-a-bloc, It’s like a car park – seemed woefully inadequate. I’d been driving on it for ten minutes when I felt a giddy little rush and couldn’t understand why. Then it dawned on me – I’d made it into second gear. I’d driven faster in funeral processions.

  Shortly after nine o’clock, I pulled in at a service station and rang directory enquiries. The woman who answered sounded as if she’d just finished a giggling fit and was looking forward to starting another as soon as she’d dealt with me. Her good humour was so infectious that I found myself smiling as I asked for the numbers of every Bank of Ireland branch in Galway city. To my surprise, there were only three. I wrote them down on the back of an old receipt and thanked her for help. She told me it had been a pleasure and seemed to genuinely mean it. This woman’s in love, I thought. Or on drugs. Probably drugs.

  The first branch I rang was in the shopping centre.

  A male voice, implausibly young, said, “Bank of Ireland, can I help you?”

  I cleared my throat. “Hello. I was wondering if I could speak to Tony Mullen?”

  “Sure. I’ll put you through.” I hung up. Right first time.

  * * *

  I arrived in Galway at eleven-thirty and found my way to the shopping centre with relative ease. The bank was smaller than I expected it to be, but busier too; there were eight people in front of me in the queue. I felt completely calm as I shuffled towards the counter. And then I saw him; he emerged from an office at the back, holding a sheet of paper in one hand and a biro in the other. His stride was easy, purposeful, confident. He approached a colleague, a moon- faced young woman and began pointing out something or other on the page, periodically tapping the biro against it for emphasis. When he’d finished speaking, he playfully elbowed the woman and said something out of the corner of his mouth. She laughed and he turned to leave her.

  “Tony!” I said – loudly, it turned out.

  Every eye in the bank swivelled towards me. He looked right at me, half-smiling. Then he realised who he was looking at and the smile vanished; in fact, his whole face seemed to collapse in on itself like an overcooked soufflé. I stepped out of the queue and went to a vacant spot at the counter. Tony’s lips moved. I presumed he was swearing to himself. Then he came over to join me. The sheet of paper was shaking in his hands.

  “Hello,” I said. “Long time no see. Sorry for shouting.”

  He leaned forward on his side of the counter the way bank staff sometimes do when they’re trying to keep your business confidential. I guessed that Tony was doing it for physical support.

  “Jackie,” he squeaked. “What, what, eh, what –”

  “Brings me here?” I said for him. “Don’t worry. Nothing much, really.”

  “Are you … living here now?” “No, no.”

  “On holiday?”

  “No. I came for the day. To see you.”

  That was the wrong thing to spring on him. His eyes bulged in their sockets.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “I won’t take up much of your time. And I’m sorry for not calling ahead. I thought maybe we could have lunch somewhere?”

  “Not today,” he said with something like relief. “Honestly. I can’t. There’s a Chamber of Commerce thing on, there’s no way I can get –”

  “Coffee then. Ten minutes, Tony. That’s all I need.” He looked doubtful.

  “Look,” I said in a low voice, “I’m not going to pretend I drove the whole way across the country just to say hello. But if you’re playing Fatal Attraction in your head, you can stop now. I’ve got two questions to ask you. Two. Then I’m gone. And chances are, you’ll never see me again.”

  “It’s not that I’m sorry to see you,” he said and for the first time, gave me a smile – half of one at least.

  “Two questions,” I repeated.

  He glanced at his watch. “There’s a place called Beans ‘n’ Biscuits a few doors away. Go out of here and turn right. I’ll see you there in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you. What’ll I get you, coffee-wise?”

  He looked at me as if it was the strangest question he’d ever been asked. “Latte,” he said, “please.”

  I smiled as reassuringly as I could and left.

  * * *

  Beans ‘n’ Biscuits was one of those coffee-shops that made me feel old. I’d grown up thinking of coffee-shops as places where furry-hatted old dears came together to talk about who had died in the past week. They had sturdy square tables and straight-backed, no-nonsense chairs. Apart from ordinary tea and ordinary coffee, they offered sticky buns and Black Forest Gateaux, served by red-faced and invariably fat menopausal women. Beans ‘n’ Biscuits, on the other hand, had a menu that filled two large blackboards. It sold eight different types of coffee, only a few of which I’d ever heard of. All of the staff were young and good-looking, and most of them were elaborately pierced. It had a few stools by a narrow bar and was otherwise exclusively furnish
ed by battered sofas. If a furry-hatted old dear ever managed to get into one, I thought, she’d have a hell of a time getting out again.

  “Hey there,” said the Tom Cruise look-alike who served me. “What can I get you?”

  “Two lattes, please,” I said.

  “What size would you like?” he asked, and then said some words I’d never heard before.

  I stared at him for a moment and then said, “Medium- ish”, hoping that would be the end of the conversation. It was. After I’d paid and collected the drinks, I lowered myself onto a free sofa with clear view of the door. No sooner had I placed the mugs on the magazine-littered table than Tony appeared in the doorway, looking like a man who’d lost something valuable and was slowly retracing his steps. I raised my chin – as if that would make me more visible – and he came over, doing his best to smile. “Latte, as requested,” I said.

  He sat beside me – not close, but not as far away as he could have – and said, “Thanks.” There was a slight sheen on his face. I guessed that he’d been splashing water on himself. It was either that or sweat – either way, it spoke of nerves that needed to be calmed.

  “Don’t panic,” I said. “You’re not going to regret talking to me.”

  “You look great,” he said, too quickly. “Your hair is … different.”

  “It sure is,” I said, raking my fingers through it. “You look great too.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. He looked the way he’d always looked, even when Jonathon had been well – tired and run- down. And balding. And long-nosed. And pale. My former lover, I thought and marvelled at my own existence.

  “How’s the family?” he asked and I saw him gulp. “Fine. They’re fine. How’s Jonathon?”

  “He’s fine too. Shooting up. Getting on well at school, playing a lot of football.”