Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  I gave him a doubtful look but he nodded emphatically.

  ‘It can,’ he insisted.

  ‘Did you ever think about learning?’

  ‘To cook?’ he said. ‘God no. I’d rather do something useful.’

  He sidestepped my shove and it landed in the air.

  ‘Who knew you were funny?’

  ‘You might be the first.’

  Andy talked more candidly when he was moving, as if the forward motion distracted from what he was saying. His mum moved to Australia a couple of days after getting him. She emigrated with her sister and mother. The other two women settled in Brisbane but his mum needed to keep moving. ‘If Mum could be free, she was happy,’ he said. She was a hands-off parent. The kind of freedom she was seeking for herself she wanted for Andy too. He never had a bedtime or curfew and he chose the next dinner or movie or place to live as often as she did.

  ‘Did you like all that moving about?’ I asked, picking up a branch from my path and using it to beat the grass.

  ‘I must have, ’cause I’m still doing it.’

  ‘So where’s home, then?’

  He took long studied steps through the pasture. ‘I dunno,’ he said finally. ‘I guess I’m still trying to find it.’

  We walked down the wide path flanked by trees several times the width of any human. We made our way into the valley and right back up again. He took two steps for every three of mine and our arms swung just out of time. I felt the sun on my shoulders, the gravel through the thin soles of my sandals, the cool respite when my dress blew against my legs. Despite the absence of a breeze, all down my spine a shiver vibrated.

  ‘Was Henry like that?’ he asked when we were still on the gravel. ‘Did he get restless?’

  ‘No.’ He was surprised by how quickly I answered but it was an easy question. ‘Henry was always on a path. He liked structure. He went from school to university to a job. He had one long-term girlfriend before me, and he wanted us to get married. We would have gotten around to it eventually. We’d have had kids and grown old together. And he was so happy with that. I never once knew him to be bored, or restless.’

  Andy thought about this.

  ‘I assumed maybe it was because we were adopted,’ he said. ‘Or because we were missing . . . something.’

  ‘Well, Henry didn’t know he was adopted,’ I said, wanting to make him feel better.

  ‘Yeah.’

  We sat on the short grass; me kneeling up, him lying back with his arms folded behind his head, telling me about how, as a kid, he got himself up for school by never closing the curtains at night. But in his teenage years he discovered all the fun things his parental freedom so easily facilitated. He got suspended for skipping class and even though he knew his mother was disappointed, she still marched up to the school to defend him, telling the principal that the world had more to teach us than what was in books.

  ‘Any excuse to stick it to the man,’ said Andy, lying right beside me with his eyes shut against the glare of the late-afternoon sun.

  At sixteen, he missed more than thirty days in a given year and social services got involved. His mother started to set boundaries then but it was too late and it didn’t come naturally to either of them. He dropped out six months before finishing and moved in with friends. He worked at a hostel and sold weed and occasionally acid to ‘surfies’ passing through. When he was nineteen, he got busted for possession for the third time.

  ‘I got two months.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, unable to hide my surprise.

  ‘What?’ He turned his head towards me and squinted his eyes open. I stopped tearing blades of grass from the soil.

  ‘Nothing.’ I tried to look nonchalant but gave up almost immediately.

  ‘I don’t know anyone who’s been to jail,’ I admitted. ‘And my drug knowledge is embarrassingly naïve. I did see Henry smoke a joint a few times when we were younger but he always held it wrong.’ I cast my mind back. ‘Like it was a nail he was about to hammer in, or a dart he was teeing up.’

  Andy grinned and turned back towards the sky. ‘I got it wiped from my record a few years later. And it wasn’t all bad; the probation officer pointed me towards the building sites, which is where I trained as a plumber.’

  ‘Would you like to have gone to university?’

  He didn’t respond for so long that I lifted myself slightly so I could see his face and be sure he hadn’t fallen asleep.

  ‘There was this aptitude test we did when we were fourteen,’ he said, and I quietly plopped myself back on the grass. ‘I got the highest in our year. The careers teacher was talking to me about financial aid and degrees and all this future stuff. I brought the results home to Mum but instead of putting it on the fridge she ripped into me for doing state-sanctioned tests. She thought uni was a way of enslaving the population. So yeah, I guess I regret that.’

  ‘But you like plumbing?’ I said awkwardly, cheerily, feeling like an auld one asking a kid if they loved their mammy and daddy.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, his voice light again as he raised a hand to further shield his eyes. ‘It’s a good job for a nomad.’

  This was the first day since he’d been in Ireland that Andy hadn’t either been working or carrying out his own investigations. He spent his time in libraries and archives, at the adoption services, attending a support group, plaguing the religious order that had handled his case.

  ‘My grandma can’t believe it,’ he laughed. ‘Every time I phone her with some new piece of information all she wants to know is why I couldn’t have put this much energy into keeping a job, or a woman who might make her a great-grandma.

  ‘It just feels like I’m getting somewhere now. I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for but I reckon I’m getting closer. You know?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’d really like to meet Henry’s parents. They’ve got to know something about why Henry went to them and I didn’t. That’s the next step. I’d like to know what they’re like, it’d help me get a better sense of my brother.’

  I thought of Isabel’s weak health and Conor’s inbuilt scepticism. The idea of introducing them to Andy was ridiculous.

  ‘Will we eat?’ I said, clambering to my feet.

  I was standing over Andy, who was still stretched out on his back, eyes closed, when I spotted it; the little mound of grass sitting just below his belly button where his greying T-shirt had ridden up. I rubbed my fingers along the skin of my thumb and felt the dirt leftover from ripping blades of grass from the earth. I’d built the same thing in the same place on the same torso so many times that I hadn’t even realised I was doing it.

  ‘What?’ said Andy, able to open his eyes now that my looming shadow was blocking out the sun. ‘What is it?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’

  And as Andy pushed himself into sitting, then standing, I watched the perfect green mound go tumbling to the ground.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘This place?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Fish and chips. Really?’

  Andy looked from me to the garish neon lights above the door of the place Henry had sworn did the best chips in Dublin. Our old flat was around the corner. I hadn’t been back to Gianni’s since Henry died, but I could already taste the vinegar on my fingers.

  ‘People eat this stuff sober?’ said Andy doubtfully.

  And then: ‘What’s with the yelling?’

  I pointed to the upstairs floor where the windows were always open. ‘There’s a boxing club above it. The guy who runs the chipper – Gianni – set that up too. He left Italy in the sixties, went to America, and then came here in the seventies. Apparently he trained with Muhammad Ali.’

  ‘Good for him,’ said Andy with none of the scepticism with which Irish people usually greeted that story.

  I grinned and went to push the door open but he put an arm out gently to stop me.

  ‘Are you fee
ling all right?’ he asked and I was embarrassed by the concern in his voice. I’d become light-headed and had had to sit down on the way here, right after we’d walked past our old flat. It was my first time back there too.

  The day we moved into that flat, I ran on ahead of Henry so I could see it in its emptiest state. And when he came through the door a couple of minutes later, carrying the first load from the car, I remember thinking: ‘Now it’s full. Now it’s a home. This is all I need.’ It rained all day and when we got everything in, we ordered pizza and did not leave for twenty-four hours. That was the first night I was frightened by my own capacity for love.

  ‘I’m grand,’ I insisted, pushing the memory away.

  Then I pulled Andy into Gianni’s after me. ‘Come on. You’ll like it.’

  We stood in line and I told Andy how Henry and I used to come here once a fortnight. We knew which tables had jukeboxes that worked and which ones were only there to take your money. You could feel the buzz just standing in the queue. I watched the staff shaking deep-fat fryers and compiling burgers as if they were being timed. I’d been hungry anyway but the smell made me ravenous. I was making the case for salt to an unconvinced Andy – ‘You need a certain amount of sodium to stop dehydration, so therefore . . .’ – when we were spotted.

  ‘My friends!’ the owner shouted down the queue. ‘Where have you been?’

  I waved back. ‘Hey, Gianni!’

  ‘What’s with the bandana?’ whispered Andy.

  ‘It’s part of his branding.’

  Gianni had been living in Dublin for forty years but still talked like he’d just gotten off the boat. Henry, and most other people, reckoned he was putting on the accent. He only ever referred to himself in the third person, which I personally thought was a very clever form of constant brand enforcement. His multicoloured headscarves were his trademark; it was what made him one of the Dublin ‘characters’ that Portobello Dermot was reluctantly becoming.

  Every thirty seconds or so we shuffled a little further along the line until finally we reached the counter.

  ‘Ciao, lovebirds! Where have you been? You don’t visit Gianni no more?’ The white-haired Italian in the mint-green shirt and tropical-print bandana looked from Andy to me and back again. Of course, I thought suddenly, of course he thought this was Henry.

  ‘Oh no, Gianni. It’s not what you think.’ I put a hand up to Andy’s shoulder. ‘I want to introduce you to someone.’

  ‘You think Gianni forget? Maybe you forget about Gianni, but Gianni don’t forget about you. Show me your face!’ He rested his elbows on the glass counter top and held his hands out to myself and Andy. ‘One face, two face! I miss your face!’

  I looked to Andy for help but he wasn’t responsive. Of course Gianni didn’t know my boyfriend had died. The local chipper owner wasn’t on the list of people you phoned in advance of a funeral. He didn’t even know our names. He just knew that a woman with my face and a man with that face used to be amongst his best customers.

  ‘This isn’t . . . A few months ago—’

  ‘You been on holidays! You,’ he waggled a silver scoop at Andy, ‘you get the sun. But you, bella,’ he directed the scoop towards me, ‘you like a ghost. You Irish all so white. The sun,’ he shook his head and wrinkled his nose, ‘the sun is not your friend.’

  The woman in the queue behind us started to clear her throat. I tried again.

  ‘This isn’t the same man . . . I mean, this isn’t—’

  ‘Yes, Gianni,’ Andy interrupted. ‘Three weeks we were in the sun and she still didn’t tan. Can you believe that? She never does, though, do you, dearest?’

  Andy gave me an expectant smile, and Gianni started scooping chips into brown paper bags.

  ‘No,’ I said eventually, with my own quizzical expression, ‘dearest. I never do tan.’

  Andy moved his attention to the price list on the wall behind Gianni. He was about to order but the souped-up Italian got there first.

  ‘You want the usual? No problem! Gianni give you the usual.’

  I watched Gianni place a large bag of chips to share onto a blue plastic tray. Then he added a hotdog for me and a quarter-pounder with cheese and no salad for Henry. I’d forgotten about this happy trio. Only the burger wasn’t actually for Henry, and Andy could have been vegetarian for all I knew. No salt or caffeine; he was definitely a healthier eater than me or Henry. He’d probably have wanted the salad at the very least. But then he was the one who’d gone along with the fabrication, and he’d seemed happy to do it.

  I took out my wallet and handed over two notes. Gianni squeezed mustard onto the hotdog. Andy took the tray and headed for a booth.

  ‘Keep the change,’ I said, though the change was almost as much as the bill. I think I was high on the normalcy of it all.

  ‘Grazie, bella!’

  I lifted the tray and Gianni moved his banter on to the next customer. I slid into the seat opposite Andy in a booth by the window, one with a jukebox that worked.

  ‘Andy—’

  ‘Is the hotdog for me or you?’

  ‘It’s . . . for me.’ I watched as he pulled two napkins from the dispenser, spread them out and took the quarter-pounder from the tray. ‘The burger is yours,’ I added superfluously.

  ‘Thank God for that, ay? I couldn’t tell you what’s in a hotdog.’ He took a bite of the quarter-pounder and chewed pensively, then contently. ‘That’s not bad,’ he said. ‘The hot chips are good too.’ He gave me a thumbs-up and just like that what had happened at the counter was old news.

  ‘Hot chips?’ I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They’re just chips,’ I corrected him.

  He took another bite and I reached for the bag, shaking a few into my hotdog container.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I want to add vinegar,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right. I like vinegar.’

  ‘No, I want to add gallons of the stuff.’

  He was chewing again but he gestured for me to go ahead, pour the vinegar onto the communal chips. Henry had hated vinegar. I thought it but I didn’t say it. Instead, I reached for the condiment and began to pour.

  I watched him watching the dispenser. I couldn’t suppress the grin.

  ‘Are you sure that’s enough?’ he deadpanned.

  ‘For now,’ I beamed, pulling a chip from the bottom. ‘You want to get the ones right down the end. Maximum soakage.’

  Andy ate mainly in silence. Every now and again he would nod his approval, mid-bite, and I’d give him a mock bow, as if I had made the food myself.

  ‘Are you a music fan?’ I asked when the eating was done.

  He pushed his napkins away and sat back sated and happy. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you want to put something on the jukebox? This one works.’

  ‘All right.’ He flicked through the 1960s offerings, his eyes darting back and forth as one set of listings was replaced by another. ‘How about Roy Orbison? “Oh, Pretty Woman”?’

  ‘Go for it.’

  He dug some coins from his pocket and put the required fifty cent into the slot. The music started as soon as he selected it. Andy counted out the beats on the table with his palm – he had rhythm, something else his brother didn’t share – and I pretended to play drums with two discarded chips until they crumbled and we lost half their potato stuffing to the floor.

  ‘That’s me out of the band.’

  I bent down to pick up the half-chips and must have brought my head back too quickly because my face was suddenly flush. I caught his eye and my cheeks reddened further, but Andy didn’t flinch. I did my best not to look away.

  Maybe life didn’t happen linearly. Maybe there were parallel worlds and existences and there was one just next to my own in which Henry didn’t disappear under the wheel of a truck, in which he wasn’t so much a twin as one half of the same coin, the first act in a two-act play. Henry had always believed in fate and I believed in seco
nd chances.

  The song ended and the spell broke but we didn’t stop talking. We discussed first gigs and musical ability or, in my case, inability. We compared favourite bands and songs and books and films. It was so easy it almost didn’t feel real. He hated a lot of the films Henry had liked – action movies, sci-fi, things with monsters – but I didn’t say that.

  I’m sorry, Henry, but I didn’t mention you at all.

  When we had been there so long the sun was starting to disappear, Gianni came over to the table with two mugs of tea. ‘For everyone else, coffee. For the lovebirds, tea. You think Gianni forget?’

  ‘Actually—’

  But Andy took the cup readily. ‘Thank you.’ He even managed to drink half of it. We talked about rom-coms and coming-of-age films and our favourite actors and directors until we were the only two people left in the place and Gianni’s yawns had become unignorably pointed. And we didn’t say a word about the rest of it. Neither of us mentioned that he was not Henry.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Henry! Henry!’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here. Hang on. I’m coming over to you. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on the couch. What happened to the lights? Are they gone everywhere? Is it just us? Henry?’

  ‘Hang on! I’m checking the window . . . Well, they’re still on in the street . . . And next door. No, it’s just us. That’s weird.’

  ‘You forgot to top up the meter.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You, Henry, you forgot to top up the meter. Again. I have fish in the fridge for tomorrow night’s dinner and now it’s going to go off. I told you two days ago to check the meter! You said you were going to do it on your way out to work.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, I forgot. I was late that morning.’

  ‘And that evening?’

  ‘Lay off, Grace.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Relax, I will go downstairs and top it up now. It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘It is a big deal. If I ask you to do something once, you forget. And if I ask you more than that, you say I’m nagging you. I shouldn’t even have to ask in the first place.’