by David Park
‘Sure, save a lot of time and hassle,’ he answers and drives the short distance to their favourite restaurant. The manager greets him by name and shakes his hand. He orders their usual to go and while he waits he flicks the pages of a real-estate magazine absorbing the poetry of pool and lakefront homes. That is his only concern now – to make enough bucks to be able to buy into the world displayed in the photographs. He looks at the picture of Barbara Bloemstein – ‘She’s working ten times smarter to deliver the American dream’ – and reads her descriptions of ‘lush landscaping’, of security systems, of ‘small single-entry neighbourhoods’ set amid ‘greenbelts of mature trees’. Get in a gated community and lock the world outside. Feel safe – it’s all he has ever wanted – and he tells himself that it’s in reach of his grasp if he works hard enough for it, makes his plans and is bold and brave enough to make them real.
When the owner hands him his order he tells him to call again and holds open the door as he leaves. As he walks towards the car he feels the heat that like some possessive lover refuses to let the day slip out of her embrace. The bright neon of the other shop fronts ignites the dusk with coloured promises of pleasure and issues gaudy invitations that spark the senses. There is a lightness to his step, a new sense of conviction, as he feels the dazzle of light spray across his path. Build the walls high, make the gates strong and everything will be all right. But when he puts his hand to the car door it is locked and he has to knock the glass before Ramona opens it. As he gets in he hands her the bag but as she takes it she turns her head away and stares at the night.
‘What’s up?’ he asks but there is no reply so he asks again.
‘I saw him,’ she says in a whisper that forces him to lean his head towards her to catch the words.
He knows now that something is wrong. ‘Who did you see, Ramona?’
‘Vicente. I saw Vicente.’
‘Where? Did he try anything?’
‘He didn’t see me. He was going into the bar. Drive the car, Danny, take me home.’
The sourness of fear smothers the sweet smell of the food. ‘Everything’s all right,’ he says and stretches his hand across to hers as he drives. ‘Everything’s all right. We’ll be home soon.’ She doesn’t answer but as he glances at her she seems smaller, to have shrunk into herself, and for a moment he gives admission to the anger and frustration beginning to bubble up inside him. Part of him wants to turn the car round and go back and find him, let him feel what fear feels like, but he knows it would be for himself and not for her so instead he goes on telling her everything will be all right. When they reach the house she does not open the car but stays sitting staring ahead.
‘I had a bad dream a while back,’ she says. He stretches across and puts his arms round her, strokes the back of her hair, but she feels lifeless as if everything that makes her who she is has been drained away. For a second he thinks she’s not going to say any more. Now the smell of the food is cloying, oppressive. ‘I dreamed he came and hurt the baby.’ Suddenly she is crying like he’s never seen her do before, breaking free from his embrace to put both hands to her face, perhaps to try to staunch the flow, perhaps to hide what she thinks is the shame of it.
‘No one’s going to hurt the baby, sweetheart. No one’s going to hurt our baby or ever hurt you again. Everything’s going to be all right.’ He tries to hold her again.
‘He can do what he likes to me but not the baby,’ she sobs, her words tumbling out in broken, breathless gasps.
‘Shush, shush,’ he whispers. He’s not going to do anything to anyone. You’re safe now, everything’s going to be all right.’ He thinks of telling her about the pictures of houses he looked at in the restaurant, of the one they are going to buy when their ship comes in, but he doesn’t have the words so instead he holds her and rocks her gently until the tears stop and are replaced by deep breaths, like someone pulled back to shore from a drowning sea.
They get out of the car and she leans against him until they have entered the house, then goes to the bathroom and closes the door. He’s unsure of what to do about the food so he lets it sit unopened on the kitchen table but when she comes out she asks him why he’s not got it ready and so he smiles and scurries for plates. When he asks her if she’s all right she nods and smiles. ‘It’s the hormones,’ she says dismissively. ‘They’re all over the place. I’m fine now.’ But she eats little of the food, mostly pushing it about with her fork, and in a little while she says she feels tired and would like to go to bed. He needs a cigarette and wants to go down to the lake but he knows he won’t leave her so he cleans up and joins her on the bed. She is lying on top of it because she is too warm and he stretches out beside her, propping a pillow behind his head. He knows she doesn’t want to talk about what happened so he says nothing.
‘You know Justine in the library?’ she asks. ‘Her husband works out at Canaveral and she says she can get us passes next time there’s a launch. Says it’s really worth seeing. Can we go?’
‘Sure,’ he says.
‘Sometimes it’s at night and you have to get there early. It’s supposed to be really spectacular.’
‘Like to see it. Something to tell our children about.’ He watches her slowly rub her stomach with the palm of her hand. ‘There were two astronauts on the moon went into a bar but left a few minutes later – you know why?’ She shakes her head. ‘Because there was no atmosphere.’ She pushes her elbow into his thigh and then a short time later she turns on her side and falls asleep. He thinks again of going out to the lake but wants to be there in case she wakens so he curls himself into her back and falls asleep thinking of great fantails of flames as rockets hurtle skyward and lift their heads towards the vast darkness of space.
In the week that follows there is no sign of Mulryne and he doesn’t go looking for him. Someone else takes the soccer – two young coaches, male and female, with badges on their tracksuits and T-shirts that say ‘Soccer is a kick in the grass’. At work Edward drifts round him as if once more he is out on the court with an opponent to be avoided, sidestepped with silence. As with Mulryne he lets him go, holds tightly to his creed of not sticking his head above the parapet, of not getting involved. He tells himself that it only comes down to doing your job, then going home and looking after your own. The baby is coming, Ramona seems to get bigger by the day and she has started to build a nest, clearing out cupboards and laying in things, telling him where needs painting, getting things ready with an intensity of purpose that galvanises him into action.
He takes some hours off work one afternoon to go with her to the hospital for a check-up where they are told everything is fine and given a copy of the scan and he stares at the swirl of what looks like a satellite weather map and listens to her excitement as he points out the hazy continent of their child slowly emerging from the clouds. She has been given the rest of the day off and he leaves her home and sees her settled before taking the lakeside path back to work. Past the condominium and the empty tennis courts. Only the occasional jogger and a couple of women in shorts, fast-walking, their arms swinging in synchronisation like metronomes, their heads pecking at the air as they talk. Two men on a bench with their heads angled towards him. Looking for someone? Waiting for someone? He is struck by the whiteness of one of the men’s arms, the slightly awkward sit of his casual clothes as if his body hasn’t become fully accustomed to them, as if they are slightly shocked by the sun. A newly arrived perhaps. Maybe on holiday. He nods as he passes.
‘Hello, Michael,’ the white-armed man says.
He doesn’t reply but keeps walking, his heart pressing and pulsing against his chest. A Northern Irish voice. For a second he thinks of running but forces himself to stay calm.
‘It’s all right, Michael.’
He stops and turns. The white-armed man is standing, looking at him. In his late fifties, thin-faced, gaunt, his eyes narrowing to take him in.
‘My name is Danny.’
‘That’s right, Danny,
and mine is Gerry Lynch. I’m from Belfast. I’m a friend, Danny, so you don’t need to worry. I can call you Danny if you like or I can call you Michael Madden. It doesn’t matter. Why don’t you take a seat?’
He watches him stretch out his hand towards the seat but he doesn’t take up the invitation.
‘Sit down, Danny. This is Sean Manley – he’s a friend as well. We need to talk.’
‘Not here,’ he says, looking back to where he can see the house. Then without saying any more he turns and lets the two men follow him. When they pass someone on the path he lowers his eyes and tris to distance himself from the men behind him. He leads them to a picnic table that sits in a little grove of trees close to the water’s edge.
‘Don’t know how you stick the heat, Danny,’ Lynch says, wiping his brow as if the short walk has drained him. There’s a sheen of perspiration in the grey hollows of his cheeks like dregs in the bottom of a cup.
‘You get used to it, don’t you, Danny?’ Manley says. His accent is Irish American. ‘It bakes up a lot hotter than this.’
‘Who are you and what do you want?’ he asks, trying hard to keep his voice strong and steady.
‘I’m going to have to get a cap or I’ll be going home with my head the colour of a match,’ Lynch says, rubbing his hand through the thin wisps of receding fair hair. He takes out a cigarette and offers him one but he shakes his head. Out on the lake a speedboat is scissoring the water and spuming a wake from the shredded surface. Lynch lights the cigarette and slowly inhales. ‘I’m from the Army Council – I’ve letters of authorisation if you want to see them – and Sean works for the movement here in America. I’m here because I’ve been instructed to bring you something.’ He sets a brown envelope on the table and turns his face to the lake.
He doesn’t want to touch it. It feels like the moment he touches it everything will explode in his face. It’s addressed to Michael Madden and has his last known Belfast address. To put his hand to it is to retake his name, open the portal to another life, another time, so he stares at it.
‘It’s all right, Danny,’ Lynch says. ‘Just open it.’
‘Is it about my mother?’ he asks.
‘No, your mother’s fine.’
‘Why have you come here? What do you want with me?’
‘Everything’s cool, Danny. No one wants anything bad for you but you need to read the letter,’ Manley says as he slides the envelope across the table.
Still he doesn’t touch it. Someone has carved their initials into the wood. The grain on the table has been dried and polished by the sun. There is a black smudge scarring one edge where something has burnt it. Lynch’s fingers are heavily stained with nicotine, the same colour as the envelope. The speedboat screams as it passes close to shore and as the two men sitting opposite him turn their heads to look at it, he lifts the letter, takes one last look at the name and address, in the hope that he will see there’s been a mistake and that it’s for someone else, then opens it. His eyes scan it, reading almost more quickly than he can take it in. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission requires your attendance … case number one hundred and seven, the case of Connor Walshe … He feels as if he’s tumbling downhill and attempts to arrest his free-fall by clutching at the words and trying to hold their meaning in his head. The Commission has the power to compel attendance … Where required, legal representation can be provided … All political parties, churches and community groups have agreed … a necessary part of communal healing and the peace process… Closure... All participants are indemnified and absolved from any legal or civil repercussions as a result of their testimony … Dates and times, more details than he can absorb.
He doesn’t speak at first because he’s unsure of how his voice will sound, or if words will form at all or merely splinter like glass. The speedboat’s wake is a frothing seam of white. There is a tumbling sickness in his stomach. He tries to breathe it away and under the table he grabs hold tightly of the seat’s edge.
‘I don’t know any Connor Walshe,’ he says softly.
‘It’s all right, Danny,’ Lynch says, offering him a cigarette for the second time. This time he accepts and tries not to let his hand shake as he reaches for it and the lighter. ‘We’re friends and the movement always looks after its own. We know exactly what you know and don’t know. For better or worse we’ve signed up to this Truth and Reconciliation thing – if you ask me I’d probably say for the worse but that’s just a personal opinion and smarter people than me say we need to do it. So it has to be done.’
‘I’m not going back,’ he says.
‘You don’t have a choice, Danny,’ Manley says. ‘Like Gerry says, we’ve signed up to it.’
‘I do have a choice and I’m not going back. My life is here now and I’m never going back.’
‘No, Danny, Sean is right – you don’t have a choice. Wrap it up any way you like but the bottom line is it’s an order and only a fool disobeys an order.’
‘I don’t take orders any more – it’s over for me,’ he says.
‘It’s never over until you’re told it is,’ Lynch says. ‘You know that as well as I do. And listen it’s a ritual, a quick appearance, and you’re not on your own, we have people who will prepare you, tell you what to say, how to handle it. It’s all over before you know it – it’s easy, painless. In and out.’
‘Painless? To say what I did.’
‘Listen to me, Michael,’ Lynch says, angrily stubbing out his cigarette on the wood. ‘Don’t start talking shit and beating yourself up. We were fighting a war. We all were and we all did the type of things that had to be done in a war. The type of things they did to us and worse. So don’t start thinking like that even for a moment. You were a soldier fighting in a war and you’re still a soldier but when you do this it’s all over. All over for good. The army lets you go, then the army lets itself go, disappears into the pages of history.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he says. ‘I’m here illegally. They’ll throw me out, never let me back.’ He thinks of telling them of Ramona but he will not soil her name by using it in front of them.
‘Listen to me, Danny,’ Manley says, leaning his arms across the table. ‘We’ll look after you. We have friends everywhere, important friends, right up to the very door of the Oval Office. The administration played their part in setting this up so we’re not going to let you get thrown out. You have to trust us to do right by you. Gerry’s already told you – we look after our own. You need to believe that.’
He does not know what to believe so he says again, ‘I’m not going back.’
‘You don’t get this, Michael, so I’m going to have to spell it out,’ Lynch says, beads of sweat forming on his upper lip and brow. There are brown freckles on his scalp as if he has run his hand through his hair and tiny flakes of nicotine have rubbed off. ‘We want you to come back voluntarily. Do that and we help you all the way, take care of everything, absolutely everything. Don’t co-operate with this thing and you’re on your own and hung out to dry. You don’t turn up and they’ll ask the authorities to deport you. You could do time here as well.’
‘They don’t know I’m here,’ he says and Lynch smiles.
‘That only takes a phone call, doesn’t it?’
‘You’d do that?’ he asks, already knowing the answer.
‘You want to try and live your life knowing that one phone call pulls the plug on it?’ Manley asks.
Their voices are hammers in his brain and every word sparks some new fear for the future. He does not know where to turn for respite.
‘You’d be away for about two weeks, no more, maybe much less,’ Lynch says. ‘You’ll be back long before it’s time for Ramona to have that baby. We have people who will look out for her. We can look after your job as well. There’s no other way out of this, believe me, Michael.’
They know about Ramona, they know about everything. Only one thing they do not know because there’s no way to know it and that is how he is to
tell her. He no longer hears what they say because in his head he’s frantically searching for that way, rejecting every conceivable, broken-backed idea that presents itself. There’s no artifice, no story that can conceal the fact that he’s another man who has deceived her, and deceived her in a way that even she has never experienced before. Then he tries to tell himself that in himself he has been true to her. That a name in itself does not change who he is or what they mean to each other. He thinks of the children on the beach with their father, pouring water into the moat of the castle they have just built. He thinks of sand, of houses, and in his ears he hears the throaty rasp of the sea as it rushes in, taking everything in its path. They’re still talking to him and he’s nodding his head but all he hears now is the break and tumble of walls. Of things being swept aside. He watches them walk away, Manley’s hand raised in a farewell wave, and their walk is purposeful, the walk of men who have done their work. He sits until they have disappeared and then he goes down to the water’s edge and is sick amongst the reeds.
The lake is still, with only the gentlest of swells pushing halfheartedly through the reeds. Far out, sky and water like lifelong friends seem inseparable. A little breeze plays with the smoke of his dying cigarette. He wonders if Arnie is somewhere out there on his boat, casting his lines. Sitting waiting patiently for a catch. The sky feels so low he could almost stretch out a hand and touch it. He lights another cigarette – there seems no point any more. Arnie says the water is always cold, cold even in the heat of the day. Soon it will be time. In his broken, shallow sleep, words had slipped like eels through his mind but when he tried to trap the truth of what he must say this morning, and how he must tell her, they slipped into the shadows. A bird skims the surface of the water, a black arrowhead in the slowly strengthening light. He thinks of ever more elaborate lies then blows them away through the purse of his lips with the smoke of the cigarette. He tries to tell himself that there’ll be a release in truth, that after all this time the weight of deception will be lifted from his shoulders. He walks to the end of the jetty and throws the cigarette away. It’s almost time. He narrows his eyes and stares out into the sleeping heart of the lake. For the next hour or so it is able to wear its own face and does not have the luminous insistence of the sky pressed relentlessly against it. Then he bends down and scoops a handful of water and splashes his face with its coldness.