by Dan Mooney
“I’ll bring the purple flowers that he used to buy for Jules. She loved them. Mom loved them too. They used to argue over them when he’d drop them at the house. I think Dad was a little jealous about that. Jules was his little girl, you know. That’s why I always pick those purple ones. He just loved buying them for her—”
“Perhaps if I set up a meeting with my counselor you’d think about going around to see him?” Ned interjected. Denis ignored him.
“No one brings her flowers now. Well, maybe Mom.”
Something clicked in his head; the part of him that lived and relived that moment shut itself down, and a new compartment opened. His mind shuffled into that compartment, where it was quieter, where he couldn’t hear the screams and sirens.
Don’t turn away from it now. Don’t. Lean into it. Face it. Face it, you cowardly fuck.
He was detaching now and he knew it; there would be no more stinging eyes. If he detached far enough, no one would be able to reach him. He was remembering Jules leaning over Eddie’s shoulder; her long blond hair, which shed all over everything, had spilled a little bit across Eddie’s shirt.
“Denis. Are you listening? I really think you could do with talking to someone. I meet your mom from time to time, and she tells me that you haven’t spoken with anyone since it happened. Is that true?”
“Would you like more tea?” Denis asked. He could fight this to a stalemate if need be.
Ned nodded.
Denis made his way to the kitchen. The Professor stood by the fridge, shaking his head mournfully.
Plasterer blocked his access to the sink.
“Listen up and listen carefully,” Plasterer told him. He had fixed his makeup. “He leaves and he leaves now. No arguments. You make him leave.”
“I can fight this one myself, Plasterer,” Denis assured him. He could feel himself receding. Growing colder, more distant. “It’s like Mom. I just withdraw and withdraw. They get the message eventually. Trust me.”
His words sounded cold even to himself.
“No. You’re not listening,” Plasterer said, echoing Ned Reilly. “If you don’t get him out now, I’m going to hurt him, I mean really hurt him. I’m going to go in there and beat him. I’ll use the damn lamp, the one with the marble on the bottom. I’ll beat the man bloody. I’ll bash his fucking head in.”
Plasterer’s face was contorted, giving him a bizarre look underneath the smiling makeup. “I’ll beat him until there’s nothing left of him. No one gets to come in here and make me cry. No one. Get him out, or I swear, I’ll ruin him for the rest of his life. Do you want that on your conscience? Him and his son? Is that what you want? Get him out. Now.”
The last words were snarled at him through clenched teeth.
Get him out. For his own safety. If you don’t, the clown will kill him. Maybe us too.
Denis nodded. His hands were still shaking terribly. He realized he was afraid. He had known anxiety and panic, sadness and bitterness for years, but it had been a long time since he’d felt fear like this. It gripped him. This threat was not idle. It was terribly real.
He made his way back into the living room.
“I think it’s time you left,” he told Ned coldly. He could see the hurt and the disappointment in his best friend’s father’s eyes. He could only break the hearts of those who loved him most.
“I really think we should talk for a while,” Ned replied.
“I think you should get out now. In fact, I’m wondering what you’re still doing here since I just told you I would like you out of my house.” The words came out of Denis’s mouth, but they felt like Plasterer had just said them. A sharp dagger of bitterness and regret stabbed him in his chest. Ned Reilly would never know that Denis was doing this for his own good. He was helping the man. Ned would never know.
“I know it’s hard, son,” Ned told him, gathering his coat and brushing down the front of his trousers. “But you’ll have to deal with it eventually. I’ll be here for you if you ever need me.”
It was such a beautiful thing to say, all things considered. Denis felt his eyes stinging again at the man’s generosity. Ned Reilly was such a good man.
“Get out,” he said anyway, despite the kindness. “Now,” he added, with a grim finality.
And Ned left.
After he was gone, Plasterer walked into the room. “I didn’t want to do that, but it’s time you realized that there are certain ways to deal with situations. Let’s not have a repeat of this.” The clown was practically shaking with the rage.
“I want Rebecca,” was all Denis could reply.
“Not for long you don’t,” Plasterer told him.
TEAR THAT TRICKLES
They sat on the couch. All five of them in a room that seemed to be closing in on him by the moment, the walls shrinking, the roof drooping low over his head. If he stood up, he could have scraped at it with his crown. No one spoke. Penny O’Neill sat to his left, staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. She was coiled tight. Plasterer was on his right, lounging in the chair, with his hands folded on his stomach, casting sideways glances at Denis. Beside the clown sat Professor Scorpion, as rigid as Penny O’Neill, eyes staring into the distance. Deano had taken his seat nervously next to Penny, twitching every now and again. If his eyes could be seen, they’d have been seen darting this way and that, looking at nothing in particular, except every now and again throwing a furtive glance at the ceiling. Denis never knew how long they sat there in silence, but it must have been hours. The sun was going down on another disastrous Sunday, and Denis sat waiting for the woman who had made this wreck possible. After Ned had left, they had argued with him.
“It was a trap, don’t you see that?” Plasterer had asked him acidly. “You think it’s a coincidence that she happened to visit your mom on the day that he calls on you? Don’t be so naive.”
Denis simply looked at him.
“You shouldn’t have let him in,” the Professor told him sadly. “From the moment he gained access you validated him. Do you truly believe he’ll stop now? He’s much akin to her. She won’t relent either. They must be excised.” His dead, sunken eyes served to make his face seem ever more sad. It was a bitter admission from the corpse.
Denis sat there.
“This is ridiculous. Look what you’ve done to our lives,” Penny O’Neill chimed in. “Look what you’ve made of us. We were a team. We rowed as one, and we lived comfortably, and then you brought her in here and now look where we’re at. Are you proud of yourself? Are you happy with this decision, Denis? Because you’re ruining everything that this house represents.”
Denis stared at the wall.
Deano shook nervously before doing a little tumble. He banged his head on the coffee table.
Denis just sat there. Every now and again he’d look Plasterer’s way to gauge the great clown’s reaction. The makeup hid so much; there was no telling what he was thinking. He simply sat there returning each look straight back.
The memory of Ned’s face wouldn’t leave him alone. It haunted him. The man had reached out, broken as he must surely be from seven years of watching his son live and not live at the same time. He had acted with compassion, and the best that Denis could manage in return was a stinging rebuke and an order to get out of his house. Like the many times that he had refused his own mother a hug, Denis knew that this was breaking the heart of someone who was already heartbroken. He heaped misery on top of misery. He was a walking, talking symbol of everything broken in their lives. A living, breathing representation of everything that they’d lost. They needed him to be better, needed him to lean on, but he didn’t need them. He needed order and things to be arranged a certain way and well-pressed trousers. He needed umbrellas in case it rained and teaspoons that were wrapped in serviettes and Plasterer and Deano, the Professor and Penny O’Neill. He did not need Rebe
cca. He knew in his head that he did not. No one told the rest of him though, because she was all he could think of. He wanted her here. He wanted her to make everything okay. He wanted to swap his housemates for her, but there was no way he could, because he needed them, not her. He needed them to balance him out. He would always need them, as long as he lived in the same universe they did, and as far as Denis Murphy was concerned, he was going to die in that universe. He would live there all his life, and then die there, not in some other universe surrounded by alcohol and T-shirts and pictures of his sister on the wall.
Rebecca did not live in that universe, so why was she here? And why did the thought of her leaving make his stomach knot up? He grimaced at nothing. He started as the rest of them grimaced at the same time. Had he said that out loud? Perhaps they were grimacing just because he was.
Denis counted the tiles that marked the edge of his fireplace. There were sixteen tiles in total. He counted them again. Still sixteen tiles. His housemates sat with him, silently, two on each side. They did not count the tiles, but simply permitted him to do so in peace and quiet. They could have objected; they chose not to.
Sixteen tiles, who fucking cares? Get a grip on yourself, you child.
He counted once more, this time aloud. There were sixteen tiles on the edge of the fireplace. He was still counting out loud about half an hour later when Rebecca arrived home.
“You home?” she called cautiously. Something in her tone gave her away.
“I knew it,” whispered Plasterer sharply. “She knew all the time. She knew he was coming. She did this to us, Denis. She did it.”
“Shut up,” Denis told him. “I’ll deal with her.”
“Oh yes,” Penny O’Neill added sarcastically. “You’ve done such a wonderful job so far. This can only go well for all of us.”
The Professor grunted, but didn’t leap to Denis’s defense.
He stood up, and the others all stood up with him.
“You stay here,” he told them.
“Who are you talking to?” Rebecca called.
“No one,” Denis replied, closing and locking the door to the office just as she walked into the adjoining kitchen.
“Ned said that you had someone over earlier.”
“So you did send him?”
“No. I didn’t send him. He wanted to come over, and he asked me if it would be okay. I just got out of his way, that’s all. He needed to tell you some things, and you threw him out of the house. Are you happy about that?”
“Ecstatic,” he told her flatly. “And since when do you decide who comes and goes from this house? I make those decisions, and it’s always no one.”
“Do you know how long he’s waited to say these things to you? Do you know how many times he’s waited for you to speak to him?” she asked, angered by his dismissal.
“Do you know how many years I’ve lived in peace and quiet until you came along and started manipulating my life?” he shot back.
She scoffed, “Peace and quiet. You live in misery, and don’t forget, you’re the one who asked me to move in here.”
“You practically forced your way in the door,” Denis told her incredulously.
“Be that as it may, I’m not prepared to watch you come back to life just to die on me again.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Denis pleaded.
He realized she had very carefully worked the situation around. Now he was pleading with her. He should have been furious. Idly he recalled the Professor asking if she might be a witch.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she returned.
She was on the offensive now. This was not going according to plan at all. In his imagination this was a much more decisive victory for him, but he definitely felt like she might have the upper hand in this case.
“I...I have...I have a life.” That was better. “And it suits me. I like it that way. We all do.”
“We?” she asked. “You think the rest of us like you living your life like this too?”
Denis nearly heaved a sigh of relief. She thought he meant “we” as in him and her and Frank and Ollie. What he had actually meant was “we” as in Plasterer and Penny O’Neill, Deano and the Professor. It was admittedly an easy mistake to make.
“No. It’s not that. It’s just...” He paused. She gave him a long and steady look. Penny O’Neill had been right to be sarcastic. Rebecca trounced him every time.
“Time out?” he suggested embarrassingly.
“Fine,” she told him, turning on her heel, her hair flicking out behind her like the angry lashing of a cat’s tail.
He waited until she’d made her way up the stairs and closed her bedroom door before opening the door to the office again.
“Oh bravo.” Plasterer applauded sarcastically. “That was marvelously handled. You’re truly a genius at the subtle manipulation of the female kind. Please, teach me your ways.”
Denis gave him a very unfriendly look.
“Told you that you can’t handle it,” Penny O’Neill announced loftily, her tail swinging from side to side. “It’s time you let someone else handle this for you.”
“I can do it,” the Professor announced, placing one hand dramatically on his chest. “I know all about the female psyche. And I know all about how to handle witches. And that one is most certainly a witch.”
“Burn her at the stake?” Plasterer asked bitterly.
“No, no, no,” the Professor told him. “I shall woo her.”
Denis would have laughed out loud at the idea of a pompous, slowly rotting Professor putting on Ollie’s “pulling shirt” and trying his hand at some pickup lines in a bar. Would have if he wasn’t cornered in his own home. It was then he realized that they were considerably more relaxed than they had been since Ned Reilly left the house. They were joking, their fury diminished.
“What’s going on?” he asked them suspiciously.
“We have an idea for how you’re going to do this,” Plasterer told him with a determined edge to his voice. “And it’s always calming to have a plan. As well you know, Boss.”
“What’s the plan?” Denis asked.
“We’re giving you a timetable. It’s how you work. But we need a little motivation in it too. So it’s like this—you have twenty-four hours to make her leave. If she’s not gone by this time tomorrow, we’re going to make her go. Make her like we made Ned go. And make no mistake about it, Boss, you’ll be the enemy at that point too.” Plasterer leaned in threateningly. His voice was low and even, not the furious hissing, snarling animal he had been earlier, but he was looming now, a new kind of threat. “We’ll start an attack like you’ve never seen before, against her and against you. We’ll set fire to things. We’ll go in her room and we’ll destroy her personal belongings. We’ll go in your room and destroy your stuff. We’ll cut up your ties and piss into your socks. We may even go outside and take this shit to the neighbors’ houses. We will not stop until we’ve driven her away from you so completely that she’ll never want to look at you again.” Plasterer smiled smugly. “It’s getting to decision time, Boss. It’s her or us, and I think you know that you need us an awful lot more than you need her. I’m not sure you’d be alive without us, would you?”
Denis shook his head.
Is that a threat? Is he threatening to kill you?
“Even your pet fur ball and this turncoat—” he gestured at the Professor “—agree with me. We know what’s best. And we’re watching you, Boss. We’re always watching you.”
His words rang inside Denis’s head like a hammer hitting a bell. Here is what it all came down to. There was no way that the two universes could coexist. He had been stupid, borderline insane, to ever think they could. He was going to have to ask her to leave, ask her to let him have his life back, so he could have his housemates back. The truce wouldn’t last forever, and t
here was no way he could win a war against them. Therein, of course, lay the rub. He couldn’t beat them, and he knew this. No one would ever understand him like they did. No one would ever accept him like they did. They didn’t just endure his idiosyncrasies, they encouraged him. They let him be himself in a way that no other person in the world ever would. His mother wanted him to do things he couldn’t, his ex-girlfriend only saw the Denis from the other universe, his friends routinely played pranks to expose the hilarity of what he was to them: a joke. A shade of someone they once knew. A clown to be laughed at. Their own pet weirdo. Only his housemates would ever truly love him for who he was. Yet they also knew his every weakness. They knew when he was isolated, when he was vulnerable. Six years of living with one another gave them all the tactical advantage, and in the pit of his stomach he knew that he couldn’t match them for ferocity.
The flip side of this was what Rebecca saw in him; she saw the alternate universe Denis Murphy, she saw his potential to be great again. To be loved by people and admired by strangers, to have that easy way that helped him to succeed at almost everything he put his hand to. She saw his ability to be whatever he chose, not what the world had made him. She saw something great inside him and she, with gentle hands, was coaxing it slowly from its hole.
And so he would have to decide.
They had stayed true to Plasterer’s word. They were always watching. As Denis struggled to think of a way to end his awkwardness with Rebecca, they watched. As he pottered about the kitchen hunting for grime and scrubbing at nonexistent stains, they stood at his shoulder. When he went to the bathroom, they stood outside, and as he opened the door, they were waiting. He made tea and they watched. They never said a thing as he fixed a cup for Rebecca. She was in her bedroom, playing her guitar as he stood outside her door with a teacup; they were standing on the landing, the four of them. Watching him. They ducked against the wall when she opened the door, out of her line of sight, but still in his.
“What do you want?” she asked brusquely. She was more than able to drive home her irritation. He felt hugely aggrieved that he was offering her apologies, but he had to get her back onside. He didn’t want to ask her to leave while they were fighting. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask her to leave at all.