Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  ‘Two weddings on the road in one summer,’ she ruminated, spooning the syrup over her poached pears and watching as it trickled back onto the plate. These comments, like most of what she said, were directed towards Andy. ‘David Reilly married an English woman, a doctor, last month, and then the couple who moved into Roger Fagan’s old place have their ceremony in a few weeks. Have you met them yet? Your father and I are invited to the afters. It’s on in Wicklow somewhere, I think.’ Then she gave a knowing grin. ‘If there was ever a house that could do with some love, eh? Poor old Roger.’

  I looked around the table but Andy didn’t flinch. I was starting to think I’d imagined it when Conor let his cutlery crash to his plate.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he demanded, rounding on his wife.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘His father? I am not his father,’ Conor spat. ‘We are not his parents.’

  Isabel brushed him away. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Conor. It was a slip of the tongue. Too much wine. Don’t be so dramatic.’

  ‘I don’t think she meant—’

  ‘I’m sorry now,’ said Conor, interrupting Andy without looking at him. ‘And of course he hasn’t met the new couple, Isabel. He’d never set foot in this estate until last week. And if he did go banging on doors, introducing himself, there’d suddenly be a lot more houses up for sale in Rosedale because half the neighbours would have died of cardiac failure!’

  Isabel narrowed her eyes, but Conor kept right on.

  ‘And I don’t know why you’re talking about David Reilly when he, Andy, this new acquaintance of ours, has no idea who David Reilly is.’ Conor turned to Andy, though he was still speaking for his wife’s benefit: ‘David Reilly went to school with our son, Henry. They played hurling together after school. Do you know what hurling is?’

  Andy shifted in his seat. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t expect you have that in Australia. It’s a popular Irish sport. Our son Henry was very good at it when he was a young lad. I used to bring him to matches on Saturday mornings. I spent hours watching from the sidelines, come rain or shine. Often it was the best part of my week. You should look it up. Hurling. It’s an interesting part of Irish culture.’

  Isabel slammed her own spoon onto the table and stared at her husband like she was willing him to burst into flames. I would have crawled out of my skin if I could, crawled under the table, across the cream rug and all the way out the door.

  Isabel and Conor were good people but they constructed their own realities. They had kept Henry in the dark like it was nothing. It wouldn’t be long before Andy was ‘son’ and Isabel was ‘mother’ and everyone had convinced themselves that Henry and Andy were the same person.

  ‘The pears are delicious,’ said Andy finally, and Isabel picked up her spoon again.

  ‘Good for a growing boy,’ she retorted with a warm laugh. Conor bent further over his plate, took one more mouthful and pushed back his chair.

  ‘Where are you—’

  ‘Bathroom.’ And he slammed the door behind him.

  I volunteered myself and Andy to clear the table and quickly started stacking the dirty plates while he struggled to keep up with the glasses.

  ‘What was that?’ I hissed when the kitchen door was firmly shut behind us.

  ‘What?’ asked Andy, letting the glasses slip onto the counter before pulling open the dishwasher. ‘It’s half full,’ he muttered and began to remove the few clean cups and plates.

  ‘She referred to Conor as your father!’

  ‘It was a slip of the tongue.’

  I watched agog as he continued to empty the dishwasher. ‘Does she call you Henry?’

  Andy shrugged, taking the dirty plates from me. ‘You’ve done it.’

  ‘Once! And not on purpose! I realised straight away and I felt terrible about it. She acts like it’s no big deal.’

  ‘I look like him, she’s used to saying his name . . .’ He slid the plates into their holders. ‘I really don’t mind.’

  I had so many arguments but I couldn’t find where to start. ‘Can we go?’

  ‘Now?’ he said, standing from his dishwasher duties. ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s been two hours.’

  He exhaled in disbelief.

  ‘What?’ I demanded.

  ‘I don’t count how long we spend doing your things, Grace. I don’t put a limit on how much time we spend reading the paper. I don’t have a clock running when we’re walking in the park or reading A Christmas Carol or whatever.’

  ‘Do not put that on me,’ I exclaimed. ‘You like doing all that stuff too. You’re always reading the paper, even when I’m not. You ask to do A Christmas Carol.’

  ‘I ask because it makes you happy. I know those things remind you of Henry’ – he raised a hand to stop me interrupting – ‘and that’s okay, I don’t mind. I want you to be happy. Same with Isabel. If she calls me Henry, I’m not going to make her feel bad about it.’

  I turned my head away. It was too ridiculous.

  ‘Or with you,’ he continued, bending his head towards me as I tried to avoid eye contact. ‘When you absent-mindedly press your feet into my hands while we’re watching telly, I don’t push them away. Grace?’ I scrunched my eyes closed but he kept talking. ‘No. I stretch out your toes.’

  The kitchen door opened and Isabel appeared holding a glass. ‘Forgot this,’ she said, and I took it from her.

  ‘Thanks.’ I handed it to Andy who slid it onto the dishwasher shelf just as the front door slammed. ‘Is that Conor?’ I asked. ‘Is he gone somewhere?’

  ‘He won’t listen. I try to tell him something and it turns into another argument. Only a saint could live with that man. Sorry,’ she said, smiling meekly at Andy. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak badly about him in front of you. It’s not fair.’

  Andy pushed the dishwasher shut with his leg and threw an arm around her, not registering that when she said she shouldn’t speak badly ‘about him’ she meant she shouldn’t speak badly ‘about your father’. She used to say the same thing to Henry. Isabel pushed herself into her pseudo-son and the happiness that flooded her face made me look away.

  ‘I was explaining it to him, my idea of paying the driver for an apology, but he wouldn’t listen. I know we can’t just write the man a cheque but I don’t see why we couldn’t make some sort of contribution, flights to visit his family in Bulgaria or pay off a bit of the mortgage or the rent or whatever he has out in that farmhouse in the middle of bog-sodden Ireland. I don’t want anything on the record, not the apology, not any financial transactions. I just need . . .’ She exhaled the end of her sentence into Andy’s chest.

  Or maybe Andy did register it. Maybe he knew exactly what Isabel believed.

  ‘Did we stack that right?’ I said abruptly, not waiting for an answer as I brushed past them and pulled the dishwasher door open again. ‘I just . . .’ Down on my hunkers, I started to distribute the cutlery more evenly. My stomach felt too tight in this position, like the baby was being squashed, but it was better than standing up, better than witnessing it. I could not condone this make-believe.

  It frightened me how readily Isabel could fool herself. She treated Andy as if he were Henry. The way she looked at him made my skin crawl. But most uncomfortable of all was the sudden and whole realisation that, when she looked at him, she could have been me.

  I pictured Aberdeen Street as we had left it earlier that afternoon; a mound of teabags at the edge of the sink, day-old newspapers strewn across the floor, a rug thrown over the couch and Henry’s slippers lying on their side in the hallway where they had been swapped for real-world footwear. It was, had I thought about it in the time before Henry’s death, exactly as I’d expected our home would look. Only it wasn’t our home, not mine and Henry’s.

  It was so easy to fool yourself when the only other people present were willing to go along with the pretence too. Aberdeen Street wasn’t safe because the world couldn’t interfere. It was safe becaus
e there was nobody present to contradict us. The world wasn’t there to observe.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said, shutting the dishwasher finally.

  ‘But I thought we agreed—’

  ‘You stay,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m tired, I need to go home. But you stay. Thank you for dinner, Isabel,’ I said, moving towards her before Andy could interject.

  I stood before Henry’s mother and saw only myself, determined and lonely and bereft of a piece of life that got bigger the longer it was gone. I abandoned the established peck on the cheek and engulfed her into the firmest of hugs. I held her like that until she started to shift. Then I picked up my bag and left.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Iheard Andy jogging behind me but I was almost out of the estate by the time he caught up. I didn’t stop walking until he had run ahead and was standing right in front of me.

  ‘Is it the baby?’ he asked, and I couldn’t help being impressed by how not out of breath he was. ‘Is everything okay?’ he pushed. ‘Is it anything to worry about?’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine. I just . . .’ I threw my arms up. ‘It’s weird in there. It’s like a shrine to Henry and you’re the only exhibit.’

  We had both stopped moving now and Andy relaxed a little.

  ‘It is weird, ay? I know,’ he said. ‘She can be weird but . . . What am I going to do? I can’t imagine what she’s been through. I mean, can you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay but, you know what I’m saying. She just . . .’ Andy shook his head. ‘I’ll talk to her.’ He bent down to catch my eye and smiled. ‘Okay?’

  ‘I ran into a girl from school at the restaurant on Wednesday.’

  ‘All right . . .’

  ‘She was pregnant. I said wow and congratulations, and I meant it. But, for a split second, I was also thinking, “What must it be like to be pregnant?” Because I forgot. I forgot that I was pregnant.’ I put my hand over my stomach as if to block the ears that it may or may not yet have developed. ‘Somewhere I was reasoning that what this woman has, with her husband and their jet-setting life and meeting people for lunch to celebrate the impending arrival of their first child, that’s not me, that’s a completely different thing to what I’m experiencing.’ I blew air quickly from my mouth.

  ‘I thought, “I’m not really pregnant, not like her.” Y’know?’ I said, just about.

  He reached for me but I took a step back, shaking out my whole body, fingers and feet and everything, trying to make it feel less like it was folding in on itself.

  ‘And it made me think about what you said about Frances not knowing you were inside her. Because I didn’t know this thing was here for so long, and now I do know and I have this constant lingering shame. And you’re right that I haven’t told people about you and I should have.’

  ‘It’s okay, Grace. You can take your time.’

  ‘No, see,’ I rallied, dismissing his platitudes. ‘That’s shame too. I can’t square it with myself, I can’t make it sit right. And that’s not fair on you. I know you think Henry got everything.’

  It was Andy’s turn to avert his gaze now but I made him look at me.

  ‘But he didn’t,’ I continued, putting my hand up to coax his chin back to me. ‘Henry didn’t have the truth. And it breaks my heart to think he never knew where he came from. I can’t lie to this kid. Isabel and Conor are great, but that whole house is built on secrets and I can’t continue them. I see Isabel this evening and it’s scary. But she’s just like me. She looks at you and she sees Henry. She wants to see Henry.’

  ‘I know you see Henry when you look at me. That’s okay, I don’t mind,’ he insisted. ‘It makes you happy. I want to make you happy.’

  The skin, the hair, the nose.

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

  He waved my words away. ‘Not just my face. I see it in you like I see it in Isabel. I know you think that a little bit of him is in me, and I don’t think that’s mental.’ He sped up before I could interject. ‘I think it too. We were formed side by side, nine months, and one decision gave him this life and me mine. It could easily have gone the other way, and that has to have done something to us. Why did I come here now, after he was dead? It’s fate. This life doesn’t feel alien to me. It feels like it’s mine.’

  ‘Andy.’

  ‘Isabel and Conor look more like me than my mum ever did. There are things I almost remember, just from stories you’ve told or places you’ve brought me.’

  I shook my head but he nodded faster as if willing me to agree with him. He wouldn’t be stopped.

  ‘Isabel took me out to see Conor’s boat at the harbour one afternoon and she couldn’t get over how, though she hadn’t steered me, I just knew how to get there. There were two roads down to the sea and while she usually took the other, Henry had always taken this one. She couldn’t believe it. That’s my reality here, Grace. My days are one long déjà-vu.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ I said, moving towards him with no idea how to finish. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘Are you telling me you don’t feel that?’ he challenged, putting a hand on mine; the coarse skin, the smooth nails, the smell that was only half his own. ‘Tell me you don’t feel like you’re getting a part of him back. Hmm? I don’t mind, I really don’t mind. I want to give that to you.’

  He was offering what I had wanted. He was proposing to make the impossible possible. He would make it so Henry was never fully gone, so he’d never fully left me.

  I studied his face, serious and sincere and vulnerable, but beyond the flesh and bone, I couldn’t see Henry. He didn’t remember the night we first had sex, how it took a few goes to make our bodies fit. This wasn’t the hand that had held mine as I sat on the toilet all night with a UTI and he sat dutifully in the bath. He wasn’t the man who had turned to me on a bike, the wind making a mockery of his hair as he told me he loved me and changed reality for ever.

  ‘I see you as you,’ I said finally.

  I watched him watching me. And I kept watching as my acceptance dawned on him.

  ‘What if I had come along before Henry died?’

  ‘If I’d never met Henry, I would have met you and thought: “This is it.”’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘Andy . . .’

  ‘What if Henry hadn’t died, and I’d turned up?’

  ‘I’d be glad you got to know your brother.’

  ‘And us?’

  ‘Andy . . .’

  ‘You have no problem calling me by my name now.’

  I concentrated on my feet. ‘If Henry was still alive, I’d be a different person.’ Then I raised my head and spoke slowly. ‘If you’re a version of Henry, then I’m as much a version of the person I was before. I used to be cheeky and funny and constantly excited about things. You wouldn’t recognise me. I used to laugh all the time. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m the same person. I should have a different name. I should need a different tongue to speak that name.’ I swallowed hard. ‘Grace and Henry. That’s how it goes. I can never be Grace and Someone Else.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ he said eventually.

  I shook my head, knowing what was coming next.

  ‘Just never Grace and Andy.’

  And the sob was out, like a gulp, a last-ditch attempt not to drown.

  In that moment I felt him leaving, a magnet pulling the wall of my chest towards him as he prepared to disappear. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to tell him to stay, but if I did I knew he would, and I couldn’t keep my half of that deal.

  ‘It doesn’t mean you have to go. You could still stay, be here.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Get your passport, get to know Henry’s parents.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I reached out momentarily but I could see him checking out, his face set to self-preservation, and I dropped my hand again.

  ‘Mind how you go,’ he said softly, his words drawing a tender line under it all.

 
; And I turned and left him standing there, at the mouth of Rosedale, visible to anyone who came in or out of the estate. Maybe they’d drive straight past him and hours later find themselves thinking about the boy who played hurling and visited his parents and then one day ceased to exist.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Iwas washing the windows in the kitchen, shaking out my arms after each section of the double doors, and the music was blaring. I’d been cleaning all morning, vigorously scrubbing the bathroom, bedroom, and now the kitchen. Taking it one room at a time. It was like therapy. Plus, it needed to be done. Mould had started to appear on the bottom of the bedroom windows and the dust balls in the living room were morphing into tumbleweeds.

  I thought about nothing, except whatever was pissing off Gwen Stefani.

  I only heard the phone because it happened to ring as one track faded out and another prepared to fade in. I leaned over to pause the CD player with my right hand and picked up the mobile with my left.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, only realising how breathless I was now I actually had to speak.

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  I held the phone away from my ear to see the caller ID: Isabel W.

  ‘He was supposed to be here at nine a.m. That was the agreed plan. Then ten a.m. came and eleven and it’s coming up on noon now and still no sign. I phoned the B&B but the landlady says she hasn’t seen him. I don’t know if she’s telling me the truth or not but if he’s not there and he’s not with you . . . Is he with you?’

  ‘Andy?’ I said, both superfluously and pointedly. I pictured Isabel standing in the middle of her living room, the non-phone hand on her narrow hip, cringing at the crudeness of the name. But we were too far gone for this. We didn’t need another game. ‘No,’ I relented. ‘I haven’t seen him since your house yesterday.’

  ‘He ran out of here after you and never came back,’ she said fretfully. ‘I presumed he’d brought you home or you’d had an argument or I don’t know, but that whatever it was, our appointment still stood. It takes some time to get to Wexford and I hate arriving with half the day gone. I mean, we’ll just have to make the most of it but really, you think he could have called.’