Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  I used to believe that when you embark on an affair you lose interest in sex within your marriage. I have learned since that desire can be a blind, grasping thing. In those months when I was seeing Aidan, I would often turn to my husband with the most ferocious passion, the desire within me like a little ball of electricity, charged and directionless and constantly seeking an outlet. When I made love to David, it was with a blend of passion and guilt, desire and remorse, and afterwards I had to resist the impulse to curl up under the sheet at the furthest side of the bed from him, my back turned so he couldn’t see my shame.

  On those nights after Zoë had left, when David reached for me in the darkness and I felt his intensity, it crossed my mind more than once that he was like a man in love.

  12. David

  Timing is everything, isn’t it? Had Zoë come to me earlier, when she was still a child, when I had a chance to be a proper father to her, would things have worked out differently? The irony is that when she arrived in my life I actually thought the timing was perfect. My mother was dying. There had been no official prognosis, but I could see for myself the steep decline she had slipped into, the steady corrosion of her thoughts and memories that brought a corresponding weakening in her body. Within those short weeks, it was like witnessing a shrinkage in her, not just her brain growing porous, but her body diminishing to a frightening degree. When I helped her into or out of the car, I noticed with alarm the thinning of her limbs. I began mentally to prepare myself for what was imminent. While the sadness of my mother’s decline was in my thoughts, I found some consolation in my growing relationship with a daughter I had not known existed. Zoë coming into my life at that time seemed a natural exchange – where one light was dimming, another had begun to glow.

  She came to us every Sunday, and as the weeks progressed, I noticed with a touch of happiness how she relaxed, opening up a little more each time. I felt a corresponding loosening within myself. At college, it remained awkward, and our dealings there retained a note of professional distance. But at home I could be myself, and so could she. As the days of the week passed, I would find myself looking forward to Sunday.

  I knew that Caroline wasn’t happy about it. She had made some noises about Robbie and Holly feeling displaced but I couldn’t help thinking that at the back of her words lay a petty meanness, a sort of jealousy over the time and attention I was giving to Zoë. Whenever we came close to discussing it, the conversation would teeter on the threshold of argument. Mostly we went around it in circles, avoiding anything too combustible. I promised to do something with just our kids, and managed, on a couple of occasions during those autumn months, to spoil Robbie and Holly. Those events passed off peacefully enough, but still I had the niggling feeling that such gestures towards Caroline and the kids were a lame effort at ameliorating the disruption I’d caused by introducing Zoë into their lives.

  She didn’t come to the house every Sunday. Sometimes I took her to my local for a pub lunch, just the two of us – partly as a sop to Caroline’s mood, partly because I felt it important that we spend a little time alone together to get to know each other better.

  ‘How’s the studying coming along?’ I asked one Sunday.

  We were sitting in the corner snug, surrounded by wooden panelling adorned with tinsel, a rugby match on the telly above the bar, two lasagnes sitting in front of us.

  ‘Okay, I guess.’ She took a forkful of food, spitting it out quickly, her tongue burned. ‘God, that’s hot!’ She laughed, looking flushed and youthful.

  ‘Here, take a drink.’ I pushed her lager towards her, drinking from my own pint while she raised the bottle to her lips.

  ‘I can’t wait for the exams to be over,’ she admitted. ‘Any hints you can give me about your paper?’ she added jokingly.

  ‘Nice try,’ I said drily, enjoying her playfulness. ‘You know I won’t be correcting yours. Undue influence, and all that.’

  ‘Sure. I know.’

  I was relieved that she didn’t argue: I didn’t want to go into the protocols of an ethics committee. Besides, any mention of McCormack made me feel queasy; he had been given the task of grading a tranche of my papers, Zoë’s included, and to reciprocate I had agreed to take some of his students’ scripts. It had been an awkward moment, but Alan had dealt with it perfunctorily at the exam board. It was enough to gloss over it with Zoë.

  ‘You must be looking forward to Christmas?’ I asked.

  ‘A break, yes, Christmas not as much.’

  ‘Bah, humbug,’ I joked, and she laughed.

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just weird now, without Mam.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ she said.

  ‘What are your plans? Will Gary be expecting you?’

  ‘Gary,’ she replied, disdain creeping into her voice. ‘Who knows what he’s expecting?’

  I’d been giving the idea some thought for a while, even though I hadn’t discussed it yet with Caroline. The thought of Zoë spending Christmas in the chilly company of a stepfather who had little affection for her was troubling. I hadn’t intended broaching the subject with her that day, but while it was on my mind, I decided what the hell.

  ‘Maybe you don’t have to go to Gary for Christmas,’ I ventured.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You could come to us.’

  ‘David, I couldn’t, but thanks.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She put down her knife and fork, and wiped her mouth with a napkin. I had the impression she was stalling. ‘You should spend Christmas together, the four of you,’ she said eventually. ‘I’d feel I was intruding.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’d love to have you.’

  ‘Even Caroline?’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘Caroline will be fine. I’ll square it with her.’

  She frowned at her plate, half the food untouched. ‘I don’t know. She really doesn’t like me. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you – especially not at Christmas.’

  I could have tried explaining to Zoë that she shouldn’t take Caroline’s perceived coldness to her as something personal, but she was so despondent that the words would have sounded hollow. I weighed up the situation in my mind – perhaps, in hindsight, I should have been more cautious – then said: ‘When I told Caroline about you, back in October, it was difficult for her, but not for the reasons you might think.’

  She was listening now, her despondency replaced by curiosity.

  ‘She got pregnant, you see, when we were students. This was before I knew your mother.’

  I told her everything. About the pregnancy, the abortion, our subsequent break-up. She took it all in. Only when I had finished did she sit back. ‘Now it makes more sense.’

  ‘It’s hard for Caroline, you see. She still feels regret about what happened. And when you came along …’

  ‘I was a painful reminder,’ she said, finishing my sentence. ‘Did you ever regret it?’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t. We were young. It happened. I never really think about it.’

  ‘Do you wish Linda had done the same?’

  Her question shocked me. She held herself still as she waited for my answer.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. Instinctively, I reached for her hand, held it there on the table. With a flash I thought of Linda that day in the Oarsman pub when I had told her about accepting a post-doctoral position in UCD. You’re leaving Belfast? she had said, her voice small and shocked. It was the same day she had given her lecture on Walter Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’. A doomed creature, she had called it: ‘It wants to make whole what has been destroyed.’ I thought about how Klee’s painting Angelus Novus had been projected on to the wall of the lecture theatre. How beautiful it was, how beautiful she was. I thought about how she had given me exactly the same look as Zoë had just given me, her hand in mine, the same plunging feeling in my heart.

  A cheer went up from the rugby suppo
rters – Leinster had scored. I let go of Zoë’s hand and we both sat back.

  ‘Come to us for Christmas, Zoë.’

  She thought about it for a while. Then, smiling up at me, a bashful look on her face that couldn’t disguise her pleasure, she said: ‘Okay, then, I will.’

  ‘What’s this?’ Caroline asked.

  It was Christmas morning; Robbie and Holly were in the next room, still exploring their newly opened gifts while I was making coffee, readying myself for the Christmas lunch preparations. Caroline had arrived downstairs, festive in a red wrap dress and black heels, her hair loosely curled, and now she stood there, holding up the little silver box.

  ‘A present for Zoë,’ I answered, adding sugar to my cup. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please.’ She turned the box over in her hands. ‘Mind if I look?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  I poured her coffee while she prised open the lid and looked at the earrings. A pair of freshwater seed pearls, silver threads curling around them in the shape of looping petals. I had spied them in a jeweller’s window in Powerscourt and thought at once of Linda, the one Christmas we had spent together, tinsel draped over the windows in her flat, a plastic Santa on the mantelpiece, looking at the earrings I had given her in the cup of her hand, saying: ‘You do it.’ How vivid the memory remained – my knuckles grazing the skin of her cheek, the whorl of her small ear against my hand, the feel of the soft fleshy lobe as I held my breath and pressed the sharp point into it. That moment seemed to me more intimate, more erotically charged, than the half-hour we had previously spent tussling with each other under the sheets.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ Caroline said, her voice quiet and contemplative, betraying, I sensed, what might have been a touch of resentment. She closed the lid and returned the little box to the counter, while I gave her her coffee, all the time hoping she wouldn’t ask how much they had cost.

  ‘What time did you tell her?’ she asked.

  ‘One.’

  I hadn’t liked the thought of Zoë waking up on Christmas morning alone in her flat – especially when we were at home together as a family – but it would have been a step too far to ask her to come first thing, too disruptive to the routines we had already established as a family over the years.

  After coffee, the four of us walked around to attend Christmas Mass in our local church, then I left Caroline and the kids at home while I drove over to my mother’s to pick her up. She seemed bright that morning, sprightlier than I had seen her of late, but the vagueness was still there as she glanced about her house, as if trying to remember something she didn’t want to leave without. Whatever it was eluded her, and I coaxed her gently into the car. At home, we settled her into an armchair close to the fire, and I left Holly chatting to her while I joined Caroline in the kitchen.

  She was wearing an apron over her dress, and there was a high colour in her cheeks as her heels clacked over the kitchen floor.

  ‘Can I help?’ I asked.

  ‘You do the spuds,’ she said briskly. ‘But first, be a love and pour me a glass of wine. It’ll make tackling this goose a lot easier.’

  I plucked a bottle from the rack – a Margaux I had been saving – and poured her some. Without commenting, Caroline lifted the glass to her lips and drank. She let out a sigh and it felt like the tension between us was lifting, as if a temporary truce had been declared. My hope was that it would last beyond the day itself – that some kind of normality might return, a gentle remoulding of our family to allow for the newest member. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was half past twelve. Zoë would be here within the half-hour. A tingle of nerves passed briefly over the back of my neck.

  ‘We’re on schedule,’ Caroline said, putting on an oven glove.

  Holly came in and set the table, and I sat for a while in the living room with my mother. My Fair Lady was on the telly and Mum watched it with glazed eyes and a smile. I kept glancing at my watch, growing a little agitated as it crept past one, and then towards two.

  Caroline stuck her head around the door. ‘Any sign of Zoë?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Maybe try calling her. The goose will be ready soon.’

  I dialled her number and listened while it rang through to voicemail. I left a message, and then, just to be sure, sent a text as well, trying to word it to appear casual.

  Robbie came downstairs and announced he was starving. ‘Is Zoë here yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Any minute,’ I said, with an optimism I didn’t feel.

  In the kitchen, I asked Caroline if we could hold off for a little longer. She continued stirring the gravy, but didn’t look happy.

  I went upstairs and tried Zoë’s number again. There was no answer. I considered driving around to her flat in Rathmines but because I had already had a drink I decided against it. Standing at my bedroom window, I craned my neck to see down our road, searching for her blonde hair above the hedgerows and gates.

  By half past two, she still hadn’t arrived.

  ‘We’ll have to start without her,’ Caroline said.

  Reluctantly I agreed, and we all sat down and began tucking into the terrine Caroline had made. A festive runner lay down the middle of the table, pillar candles lit, encircled by sprigs of holly and ivy. Christmas choral music came softly through the speakers. I knew I was lucky. I was surrounded by my family in our comfortable home, enjoying the spoils and privileges of hard work and a professional salary. Yet part of me was thinking about the dingy flat in Belfast, the plastic Santa, Linda and I eating, plates balanced on our knees, and it seemed to me, when I thought about it, that I had felt much happier then. I had been unburdened, my whole life still ahead of me, with the joy of the new love that filled me in a way I couldn’t measure. I ate the terrine, clearing my plate, with a degree of discomfort and guilt.

  We finished off the Margaux and I opened a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. After the goose, there was pudding, and we all agreed that we were too stuffed for cheese. Outside the window, the sky had darkened. No one said it, but it was clear that Zoë wasn’t coming.

  ‘No word?’ Caroline asked, as we cleared away the dishes.

  ‘No. I wonder what happened to her.’

  ‘Maybe she went up to Belfast after all.’ She put the detergent tablet into the dishwasher and flipped the door closed.

  ‘You’d think she’d have rung,’ I said.

  Caroline gave me a sidelong glance that seemed laden with wry weariness, but didn’t say anything. All day she had seemed to be giving off something – a kind of relief that Zoë hadn’t turned up. It wasn’t anything she said per se, just the relaxed relish she took in the day without Zoë, as I perceived it.

  ‘I just hope she’s okay,’ I added, prodded by anxiety. It wasn’t like Zoë, no matter what Caroline was implying.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ came her sharp reply. She wiped her hands on the towel, then threw it on to the counter with a flourish. ‘I’m sure she’ll be in touch when she needs something.’

  As it happened, it was not Zoë who got in touch, but someone else.

  Christmas Day passed and I dropped my mother home the following morning. Afterwards, Caroline and I took the kids for a hike up around the Three Rock Mountain – a St Stephen’s Day tradition. I walked with a hand in my pocket, clutching my phone, waiting to feel it vibrate with an incoming call or text, something to explain Zoë’s absence. I had left several messages, dropping any pretence of casualness as the time passed and there was no response from her.

  Back home, I went straight through into the kitchen, putting on the kettle for tea, my hands and feet still numb from the bitter cold of the mountain air. I didn’t hear the phone ringing in the hall. It was only when I heard Caroline’s voice saying, ‘Is she all right? What happened?’ that the rigour of her questions and her polite but worried tone alerted me to trouble. I stood in the kitchen doorway, watching her speaking into the phone, growing more anxious as she said: ‘Of course. I’ll let him know immediately. H
e’ll be over right away.’

  My mother, I thought.

  But it was not my mother.

  ‘It’s Zoë,’ Caroline told me, her eyes fixed on my face, choosing her words carefully. ‘She’s in hospital.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s fine, David. She’s out of danger.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lowering her tone, so the children in the next room wouldn’t hear, she said: ‘She took an overdose.’

  Weakness came into my legs. The numbness left my extremities and I felt the stinging pain of pricking needles all over my feet and hands as the blood came rushing into them. ‘She tried to kill herself?’

  Caroline didn’t answer that. Instead she told me which hospital and named the ward where Zoë was. I grabbed the keys from the hall table where I had left them and went back outside. My hands were trembling as I started the engine – it was still warm.

  It’s something no parent ever wishes to see – their child lying helpless in a hospital bed. Even though Zoë had been a stranger to me only months before, even though I had missed all the birthdays and Christmas mornings of her childhood, the first day at school, the hockey matches and end-of-year plays, as soon as I saw her lying there, tubes travelling into her veins, I felt a rush of protective love so strong that I had to stop and collect myself, lest all that emotion might break inside me and flood out.

  She was lying on her side, a blanket covering her body. She was not fully awake – sedated, perhaps, or deep in a depression. A bruise blossomed on her hand where an IV had been inserted. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I was afraid of disturbing her.

  As I approached the bed, her head turned. As soon as she saw me, the mask fell away, her face contorting with tears that seemed to gust through her, savage and raw.

  ‘Zoë,’ I said softly, pulling a chair up next to her.

  She was trying to cover her face, hiding her brokenness from me, but the sobbing and shaking spoke of her fragility. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, the words coming out liquid and halting, spoken between gulped breaths.