Where the Edge Is

by Gráinne Murphy

  In her hand, she still held the envelope. If there were any doubts about the importance of that kiss, they were swept away by the embarrassment with which he handed over the envelope and she accepted. The distance between people, it seemed, was not a function of time. It was not subject to the laws of physics. Funny how that happened. In the beginning, they had marvelled at the idea that they were ever strangers. Now, it was hard to believe in the intimacy they shared. As if all that shared welling up at TV talent shows and peeing with the door open and all the mess and muck of childbirth were imagined or invented.

  There was a momentary flicker, useless to deny it, when his hand slid into the back of her hair and pulled her closer. She might have been twenty-eight again, touring Rome’s tiny churches, as awed by themselves as by the architecture around them, kissing while old men tutted and muttered under their breath. His holidays now were zoos and skate parks, presumably, while hers were a few days of afternoon movies and driving past the office while pretending she was on her way somewhere else.

  Was it better to be with the wrong person than to be alone? Nights, she lay in bed, the sheets pleasantly cool against her skin if it had been a good day. Before – for those were her twin time frames, Before and Since, the two halves of her life – two bodies had pressed the length of each other in the bed, legs curling around their overlap. But that pressure of skin to skin had reduced without a word spoken, leaving each of them on their own little cotton island. Blame filled the space between them, bringing an odd sort of comfort. Had he, too, indulged it in the belief that it was temporary?

  Yet there is a different truth now. A relief in knowing that the space beside you is boundless. No stray leg to catch you off guard with its warmth, no gaping mouth stealing your oxygen. Occasionally, the expanse of it frightens you, sinks you into the bed, where the mattress might take and smother you entirely. Only the fear that nobody will find you pushes air into your lungs.

  A yawn. Smother it. Ignore it. The room is warm. Tiredness is not something you admit to. What right have you to something so trivial, so fixable, when Aisling is dead? Not everything has to be compared, the social workers told you. Some things have to stand alone or we would never get past them.

  Your half-life is still half more than Aisling got. What have you done, other than squander it in her name?

  You are suddenly so sick of yourself that you want to open a hatch in the top of your head, climb out and walk away, leaving your traitorous self behind.

  * * *

  The noise and busyness at the crash site were a shock. Already less memorial than building site.

  ‘The bus has to be taken away to be examined by some sort of specialist high-tech team,’ one of the remaining cameramen explained.

  The new footage would please Noel. The short attention span of the public was even now finding the hospital car park a bit samey. Besides, that shot of the bus being pulled out might turn out to be the iconic image. Wouldn’t want to get caught with your pants down on that one.

  The bus protested its exhumation, metal grinding against the gash before it let go of the ground with a howl. Years before, in Amsterdam, she and Tim saw the bed that Rembrandt’s wife had slept in. A wooden box, essentially, mounted high against a wall, two wooden doors on the fourth side, designed to be closed for privacy or warmth or to keep out the smoke from the fire. They had laughed and shivered, delighted at the horror of it. Later that day, as they drank frozen daiquiris in bright sunlight, they called it a living coffin.

  By the end of next week, the road would return to normal. Only plastic-wrapped dead flowers and mildewed teddy bears would show that anything had happened here. The families would split into two branches: those who avoided the road and those who were drawn to it.

  Nina turned towards the fire station, where the final press conference would be held in the lobby. She rubbed her tired eyes and let the starry black ants on the edge of her vision lead her there.

  * * *

  It must have been tiredness that kept them all from screaming and banging their heads on the wall as they detailed the rescue step by step. A version of every other statement of the past two days, in redux. The investigation would be expedited, the results made public. Not because there was a danger of the same thing happening again, they were at pains to stress, but in order to be fair to the families. They had lost their loved ones, the logic went, the least they might expect was a report notable for speed rather than accuracy.

  Tim stood with Leo and the Chief, nodding in all the right places. He looked calm and assured, the kind of man a person would choose if they were doing schoolyard picks for apocalypse teams. Had all the faking-fine in their personal lives equipped them better for their jobs? Keep that one away from the headhunters, the thought came bitterly, otherwise they would all be looking for the devastated.

  You were very calm at the funeral. People commented on your strength when faced with the box, the lip of the grave. The moments that told other people the kind of person you were, whether resilient or self-indulgent.

  ‘People keep telling me how brave I am,’ you muttered to Irene in the funeral home.

  ‘There’s probably a pool going on what you’re taking,’ Irene whispered and squeezed your hand. You had to move away from the normality that might tip you, at last, into tears. They were right in a way, you were taking something. You were taking a whole lot of things: taking one minute at a time, anything else too long to think about getting through. Taking each breath and trying not to hold onto it, that was a dangerous road of thought. Take, take, take. More than your share. Ticking items off a list you never wanted to make.

  You were planning her birthday party, imagine, your mind skipping so far ahead you couldn’t see what was right in front of you, looking at your lists when you should have been watching her breathing. Wanting to spoil her, to make a princess of her for the day. You had already bought her a dress and little funky trainers to go with it, with butterflies on the sides that would light up when she walked, holding your hands. They won’t do much twinkling under the lid. They will remain as pristine as the day you put them on her. You would have done better to be a little more afraid of her. A little more afraid for her.

  It snowed that day. That orphan day, with nothing before or behind it. Even the rain was frozen. The world a Tim Burton fairy tale. The church was beautiful, at least that. At the top, the priest simpered his way through the Mass, well-meaning fool that he was. What could he know, what could he offer you or anyone on the death of a child? Only empty words. No child of his own to flesh them out and give them meaning. ‘To everything there is a season,’ he said, and you couldn’t help it, you hummed along. Your laughter bubbled out of you, spiralling like smoke above Aisling’s coffin. If it had a colour, you thought wildly, it would be lime green and she would reach her hands out for it. They did their best, your broken families, and you hated them for it, for all of it. Tim was the only one you could bear to be near.

  * * *

  The press conference ended and people began to leave. As she watched, a woman approached Tim. Blonde and neatly dressed in the middle-aged-mother uniform of jeans tucked into boots, belted wool coat, oversize scarf. Deb. If Aisling were alive, this woman would be in her life.

  No. If Aisling were alive, this woman would be in none of their lives.

  She watched the two of them walk towards her, her feet frozen to the ground.

  I kissed him, she could shout. But what was that one kiss, only the echo of all the years and all the kisses before it.

  ‘Nina, this is Deb. Deb, Nina.’

  ‘You must be worn out,’ Deb said.

  Was that an expression she used on her children, a way of letting them off the hook for bad behaviour? It would work, Nina could see that. It was one she might have chosen herself. She almost wanted to tell her it had been a bitch of a day, ask her for understanding.

  ‘I was only on the sidelines,’ she said, instead.

  Deb nodded and wai
ted for a polite moment longer before laying her hand on Tim’s arm. ‘Do you want to leave the car and come back with me?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll follow you. There’s something I need to do first.’

  ‘Don’t go there alone,’ Nina said, when Deb had walked away.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re going to Aisling’s grave. Don’t go there alone. Ask her to go with you.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  She shrugged. Some things you just knew.

  ‘Did you want to…?’

  She shook her head and pushed him gently, watching as he caught up with Deb and took her hand.

  * * *

  The house was quiet when she let herself in. Everything was exactly where she left it that morning. Sometimes it was hard not to wish for just a little more mess.

  Her baked potato was too soapy, the sofa too lumpy, the TV unworthy of attention. She was like the princess and the pea. There was nothing for it but to ring Irene.

  ‘Thank God you distracted me,’ Irene said. ‘I’m fighting my conscience here. Trying to decide between home-made or shop-bought biscuits for this thing with the neighbours. It’s an epic battle, I assure you. How are you?’

  ‘I’m so tired of being miserable!’ Nina burst out.

  ‘I know,’ Irene said. ‘It’s wearing. Did you try a bath?’

  ‘That won’t fix anything. Anyway, they’re never worth the trouble.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I met Tim’s… I refuse to use the word “girlfriend” for any woman who must be well into her forties.’

  ‘Lady friend?’ Irene suggested.

  ‘Too Victorian. Love interest?’

  ‘Too… cutesy. Partner?’

  ‘Too… something.’ Permanent, Nina thought. It sounded too permanent. Even if it was clear that it was. ‘She seemed nice. He needs someone nice.’

  ‘He had someone nice,’ Irene said.

  ‘I admire your loyalty, but you were always a desperate liar. I was never nice.’

  ‘True. Do you think she’s in the market for a new sister?’

  They laughed.

  ‘Is that what made you miserable? Not that it has to be anything specific.’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just one of those days.’ She couldn’t face dissecting it, not after spending what felt like the whole day inside the whirl of her own head. ‘How’s Dónal Óg?’ ‘My boy’, she used to call him, until the words took on unbearable weight.

  ‘He’s grand. Up to new mischief every day.’

  Bless Irene for understanding what she needed to hear. For not being one of those thoughtless parents that declared they wanted to freeze their kids at that particular moment in time, whatever cute or sweet stage they were in. The kind of parents too stupid to know their own luck. Faced with them, she kept her smile tight, trapping the mean words behind her teeth.

  ‘He spent twenty minutes this evening telling me about people being persecuted by the pixies,’ Irene continued. ‘I thought it was some fairy story they read in school. But it turned out he meant the Nazis.’ When they finished laughing, she said, ‘Come for dinner tomorrow, he’d love to see you.’

  ‘I’m not sure yet what time I’ll finish work. It might be another late one.’

  The refusal was automatic. She stood in her bathroom, brushing her teeth and counting the number of excuses she kept to hand as a way of avoiding people. The few that didn’t look at her as if she were the bogeyman made flesh. Work, of course. Dinner with a different group of friends. Chest infection. Tickets to something. Never the truth. Never a bottle of wine on her own, or home baby movies, or the desire to go to bed early and wake as the sole survivor of her little family.

  She turned on the baby monitor and got into bed. If she were Rembrandt’s wife, she would close the doors in around her, shutting the world outside. How carefree and cruel her laughter at the raw, hard horror of those times, the constant daily tangle of normality and mortality. How unaware she was that keeping death close reduced some of the fear.

  How sometimes it was the only way to get through the day.

  * * *

  Nina waited a moment before knocking on Noel’s door. He would listen to her idea, she knew, then ask if she was okay, if she was up to it.

  Was she?

  In the three months since the crash, she had covered the funding crisis for a donkey sanctuary, the proposed closure of a long-standing primary school due to lack of numbers, guerilla gardening and the return of crochet as a pastime. She enjoyed standing in the presence of solutions. Life, not death. If there were days when the voice in her head insisted that one of these things is not like the others, then she took a minute to listen to it before reminding herself that those feelings belonged to past events. To ask herself what her current feelings were. To pick one and focus on that. It was often sadness, but that was okay too. A lot of therapy was bollocks, granted, but this new woman seemed to understand how Nina worked.

  ‘Aisling. A dream or vision.’ It was something he used to say to her in the early days, a way of remembering, of checking in. She told him once that she worried it was a name that was only waiting to float away from her. That she lay awake at night wondering what might have happened if she called her daughter something else. Joan or Margaret or Bernadette. A name with the assumption of sensible middle-age built in.

  ‘Why now?’ Noel asked, when she finished talking. ‘What’s the angle?’

  ‘The inter-agency report on the crash is due to be published shortly, so I thought we could do a followup with the families.’ Nina paused. ‘Here’s the thing: I want to do it as a written piece.’

  ‘That’s not going to be much good to me and my television station, now is it?’ He shook his head. ‘I know someone who’ll want it. I’ll make a call. What am I selling them?’

  Nina lifted her chin. ‘The Lost Parents.’

  * * *

  Nina looked at her list of names. With the report due, Tim would be the logical place to start. She wasn’t brave enough for logic. She tapped her pen against the paper and picked up her phone.

  It rang several times before Richie picked up.

  ‘I didn’t hear the phone,’ he apologised. ‘I’m trying to stuff a piece of pork and the fucker won’t stay rolled. Excuse my language.’

  Nina laughed. ‘That sounds fancy.’

  ‘Too fancy, do you think? It’s just for a couple of friends—’

  ‘Roast pork is always just fancy enough,’ Nina assured him.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m sure you didn’t ring me for my cooking tips,’ Richie said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m doing a follow-up. Talking to everyone that was involved in the crash to see where they are, how they are coping. I wanted to ask if you would be interested in being interviewed again. The public would love to hear how our hero bus driver is doing.’

  He sighed. ‘Hero or villain, it’s only all what other people think of it. To let in one, I have to let in the other. I’m trying to look after myself a bit more, walking, eating right, you know. It’s not much of a new start if I keep hanging onto all that old stuff.’

  * * *

  The rest of the morning brought no luck. The teenager, Paul’s, parents had been advised by their solicitor not to give any interviews ‘until the implications of the report had been absorbed and decisions made regarding next steps’.

  Orla’s parents refused an interview. Denis was kind and distracted on the phone.

  ‘Vera isn’t doing too well,’ he said. ‘It’s hard for her to get used to the empty house.’

  The sadness of a child’s empty room was something that there were no words for. No cure for.

  ‘We always worried about what would happen to Orla when we died, who would look after her. We didn’t want the burden of the future to interfere with her relationship with her sisters.’ His voice cracked. ‘After all the years, we forgot what it was like to worry that we could lose her.’

&nbs
p; The pain in his voice had been sharp and inviting. It took Nina sixty lengths of the swimming pool before she could breathe properly, before she could be sure she had resisted the instinct to dive into it with him.

  She swam on, slow and steady, lowering her resting heart rate. Her therapist wanted her to spend time around other people and the gym counted. On good days, she let the water take her, weightless as Aisling in the days she was safely tucked inside her. On difficult days, she remembered an article she read that said the slower your heart rate, the faster your perception of time passing, so that while children and insects felt days stretch out for weeks, adults feel time speed up on them. Beating her arms against the water, she wondered if Aisling, with her racing pulse, had felt time move slowly, if her little lifetime might have felt expansive.

  * * *

  ‘I don’t think I can do this interview,’ Alina said. ‘After the accident, I tried hard to make everything like it used to be. To go back to believing the best of my life here.’

  Nina closed her eyes. She knew.

  ‘It is my own past but none of it feels real to me.’

  ‘Just because it doesn’t feel real now doesn’t mean it wasn’t real then,’ Nina said and wondered which of them she was trying to convince.

  ‘My mother and I are preparing to take a trip. We are returning home.’

  Nina wondered if Alina knew how she emphasised that final word.

  ‘I hope your trip brings you peace,’ Nina said.

  ‘For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed,’ Alina said, and hung up.

  * * *

  Nina crossed the hotel lobby to where Lucy sat, flanked by her mother and boyfriend.

  ‘You’ll have to keep her in check, Kieran,’ Pat was saying. ‘Nothing kills sympathy like cynicism.’

  ‘Hello,’ Lucy said, standing to greet her.

  Nina had a brief pang at the visible baby bump. I acknowledge my feelings and I put them aside, she told herself.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, Lucy. Take all the time you need,’ she said, when everyone was settled.