‘We were told not to touch the ice-cream. It’s Dad’s.’
‘I told him I have my period,’ she says, sucking on a full spoon.
Dad hates period talk.
‘A really clotty one.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘Jesus, Ciara.’
‘I know, he’d have given me anything to shut me up. You should try it.’
‘No thanks.’
She rolls her eyes.
‘If you’re not careful, he’ll send you to hospital. Haven’t you had your period for three weeks now?’
She widens her eyes innocently. ‘I know, which is why I really need the cookie dough ice cream.’ She chuckles. ‘So, what’s the deal, are you having sex with the Ger-meister tonight?’
‘Shhhut up.’
She grins. ‘You are. Whoop whoop. Sexy pants.’
I close my eyes. ‘Ciara, when I was eleven I didn’t speak like that.’
‘Well I’m nearly twelve and I do. Come on then, what are the options?’
‘All of this. None of this.’ I sigh and pick a few things up. ‘This. Or this. I actually bought this for the party.’ I hold up a denim skirt and a top. Clearly, in this lighting, in reality, the two do not match.
Eleven years old or not, I trust Ciara’s opinion, I have faith in her style but I lack the confidence to wear her recommendations.
She puts the ice cream down, lies on her stomach over the edge of the bed to root through the clothes. ‘So where are you going to do it?’
‘I said, shut up.’
‘In the GAA club, up against the Sam Maguire? Or you with your arse in the Sam Maguire.’
I ignore her.
‘In the toilets, beside a bunch of old men in tweed caps eating egg sandwiches? In the staff room, up against some Tayto crisps?’
That one makes me laugh. The funniest thing about Ciara is how she doesn’t find herself funny. She never laughs, even when she says the most hilarious things, and she never seems to run out. She rattles things out one after the other, like her best humour is yet to come, as though she’s building it up, practising, trying to improve.
I don’t reply to her automatic weapon-like firing off of places I can have sex in a GAA club, but I watch her sorting through my clothes while I think of our actual plans to go to Gerry’s house. His parents, along with all the other uncles, aunts, and family members who don’t wish to be deafened by music they detest, are leaving Eddie’s party to continue the festivities at Eddie’s house – his parents are infamous for their house parties, where the sing-songs go on until the crack of dawn. This means Gerry’s house will be empty.
I remember my mum telling me that in a small house of eight siblings she and her brothers and sisters naturally learned to find their hiding places, that in a place so packed with personalities and individuality, it was imperative, a survival strategy, to carve out a space in the world that was theirs, to get lost in their imagination, to play, to read, to be left alone, to be themselves, to find isolation and calm in the midst of chaos. Hers was the space behind the couch where the base of the chair didn’t meet the wall. Those siblings who didn’t find their own space were, and remain, a little less settled in themselves. The same can be said for my friends. We’re always on the hunt for our own space to be with our boyfriends, a free house is a gift to behold and even then, once inside, it’s a competitive hunt for your own patch, the end of a couch, a darkened corner or empty room. Finally, tonight Gerry and I can have our own place, our own time, to really be together without prying eyes or people walking in on us, to create some personal chaos in the midst of calm. You can’t say that a year of waiting hasn’t been long enough. Gerry and I are practically nuns compared to our friends. Tonight is my idea, my persuasion, gentle persuasion. It didn’t take much. I’m ready, are you? I’d asked him.
Gerry may be wild and fun, but he’s also a thinker. Mostly he thinks before his crazy stuff and does it anyway, but he always thinks first.
There’s another knock at the door and I feel ready to explode.
‘Gerry’s waiting,’ Dad says, obviously sent up by Mum, who doesn’t want to be abused again.
‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ Ciara calls.
‘It would be built quicker than Holly getting dressed,’ he replies. Ciara guffaws sarcastically, and we hear him wander down the hall.
‘You’re always so mean to him,’ I laugh, feeling pity for Dad.
‘Only to his face.’ She surfaces from a slush pile with a dress. ‘This one.’
‘That’s the one I started with.’
I hold it up against my body and look in the mirror.
‘Definitely looks better from the front,’ Ciara says, from behind, with a view of my underwear.
It’s a little satin spaghetti strap black dress and it’s very little.
‘The black will hide the blood stains,’ she says.
‘Ciara, you’re vile.’ I shake my head.
She shrugs and reaches for her ice cream before leaving.
I go downstairs. Mum steps out of the kitchen to examine me. She gives me a proud but concerned, and at the same time warning, look. All three expressions I recognise and understand. Everything my parents say and do has many meanings. Like when my parents say ‘have fun’ but their tone suggests they mean to have their idea of fun, that if I actually have the kind of fun I want to have, then there will be repercussions and consequences.
Dad, Declan and Ciara are watching Beadle’s About on TV and Declan is roaring with laughter. Jack and Gerry are in the den playing Sonic on Jack’s new Sega Mega Drive. As well as Eddie, Jack and the Mega Drive are the second addictions to draw Gerry away from me. I’ve spent countless evenings and weekends in that room up against both of them. The room that usually smells of dirty socks and smelly feet tonight is filled with the smell of aftershave.
Gerry has his eyes fixed on the screen, playing Sonic.
Jack glances at me and wolf whistles in a jeering way. I wait at the door for Gerry to finish and notice me and for more of Jack’s smart comments that I’ll ignore. I know he likes Gerry, I know that he’d swap him for me any day and that all of his disparaging remarks and stereotypical big brother comments are out of duty, embarrassment and because he thinks it’s expected.
Gerry’s face is a mask of concentration, pursed lips, serious brow. He’s wearing blue jeans, a white shirt. Gel in his hair. His blue eyes sparkle. He’s wearing enough CK One for every man at the party. I smile, watching him. As if sensing my desire, he finally removes his eyes from the game. Eyes up and down, quickly at first, then slowly. I’ve butterflies in my stomach. I wish we could miss the party completely.
‘Ah no!’ Jack yells, throwing his hands up, giving us both a jolt.
‘What?’ Gerry looks at him.
‘You died.’
‘I don’t care,’ Gerry grins, chucking the control pad into Jack’s lap. ‘I’m off.’
‘Keep your hands off my sister.’
Gerry grins as he makes his way to me. Our eyes lock. He holds his hands up, where Jack can’t see them, open palms, spread fingers, squeezing at the air as if about to grab my boobs. The door pushes open beside me.
It’s Ciara.
She observes his disappearing spread hands and his quickly reddening face.
‘Nice. Is that the foreplay?’
The party at Erin’s Isle is everything I imagined it to be, but when I’d imagined it, I was on the outside. It’s easier when I’m in it. A room filled with Gerry’s cousins, uncles, aunts, we don’t stop talking over plates of sandwiches, chicken wings and cocktail sausages. I’ve finished my permitted one alcoholic drink by 10 p.m. and my secretly understood but not spoken about second drink by eleven. The older guests leave at 11 p.m. as planned, with Eddie starting a conga line to lead them around the venue once before taking them outside to their cars and waiting taxis. And then the DJ starts and the music is so loud there’s no more civilised chat. I down a third drink, thinking I’ll have time
for a fourth, beginning to think that our plans to leave have been scuppered by Eddie’s attention on Gerry all night. When Eddie takes to the dance floor to display his comedy breakdancing, I’m sure I should order another drink because Gerry is usually the eager sidekick in this show. But I’m wrong. This time Gerry chooses me.
Gerry leans in to whisper something to Eddie, Eddie grins, slaps his back. I’m mortified, I’m hoping Gerry hasn’t told him exactly what we’re about to do, but the fact we’re leaving early is a giveaway. Eddie drags Gerry across the dance floor over in my direction. Eddie hugs me and squeezes me so tight I can barely breathe. Gerry is so pleased at this meeting of the giants of his heart that he doesn’t do anything to stop him.
Eddie, sweaty and drunk, pulls us both close to him.
‘You two,’ he squeezes us tightly. ‘You know I love this lad.’ A bit of his spit lands on my lip but I’m too polite to wipe it away. The sweat from his forehead is slick against mine. I think of my make-up being wiped off.
‘I love this lad, I do.’ He kisses Gerry on the head roughly. ‘And he loves you.’
He hugs us both again. Although I know his sentiments are well meaning, and it’s a moment, it’s also painful. This guy who bashes into grown men on a football field doesn’t know his own strength. His shining pointy party shoe is on my toe, it pinches and hurts. I concentrate on making my body as small as possible while he continues.
‘He loves you,’ he says again. ‘And you love him too, don’t you?’
I look at Gerry. Unlike me, he seems moved by this messy man display of love and intimacy. He doesn’t seem bothered by being squished, sweated or spat on. Or the fact that his girlfriend is having her love for him forcibly squished out of her.
‘Yes,’ I say, nodding.
Gerry’s looking at me with tenderness and large pupils, which tells me he’s drunk but that’s OK, I’m feeling the buzz too. He has such a silly smile on his face that I laugh.
‘Go on, get out of here, you two,’ Eddie says, releasing us from his grip, ruffling Gerry’s hair with another violent kiss to the head before heading back to the dance floor for a dance battle with a teammate.
We get to Gerry’s house as fast as we can, determined not to waste a second of our magic time. Gerry is a sweetheart, Gerry is thoughtful. We both are. We both think about each other, which makes it all the better for ourselves. He lights a candle, puts music on. At sixteen and seventeen we’re the last of our group of friends to have sex, and the couple the longest together. I’m smug enough to think Gerry and I will be different and we’re smug enough to make sure that it is exactly what we want it to be. I hate the word smug, yet it is how others see us. We are confident enough together to do our own thing, never to follow the crowd, to dance, not march, to the beat of our own drum. It bothers others, cuts us off from time to time, but we have each other and we don’t care.
We make love and it’s gentle, and deep, and he finds his hiding place in me, and my refuge is wrapping myself around him. We carve our place in the world together. Later, he kisses me gently, eyes searching mine to read how I am feeling, always caring about what’s going on inside my head.
‘Eddie’s hug hurt more,’ I say, and he laughs.
I wish I can spend the night with him, wake up in his arms in the morning, but I can’t, we’re not allowed. Our love is limited and decided by others, the simple but elusive act of waking up together with the sunrise a pleasure for only when ‘they’ say so. My curfew was 2 a.m. and it is already that time when I wave goodbye to Gerry from the taxi.
I’m barely asleep when my mum wakes me and I think I’ve been found out, but the early morning emergency wake-up call has nothing to do with us. Gerry is on the phone and he’s crying.
‘Holly,’ his voice is ragged, sobbing. I panic. ‘Eddie is dead.’
After his party ended in Erin’s Isle, Eddie and his group of friends moved on to a club on Leeson Street. Eddie was falling around drunk and separated himself from his friends in an effort to get a taxi home. He was found lying unconscious on the street. A hit and run. He died before he reached the hospital.
Eddie’s death breaks Gerry. He still works, but he’s a malfunctioning Gerry and I know he’ll never go back to the way he was. I don’t lose him, in fact the opposite happens. All the parts of Gerry that were nonsense disappear and the parts that I love and more, become refined.
I’ll never know if it is because of the moment we made love around the same time as Eddie was living the last hours of his life, when we melted down our old forms and remoulded into something new together, or if it was Eddie’s death. I’m sure it was both. Eddie’s death is such a monstrous event in our lives, who’s to know which event changed which parts of us. What I do notice is that both events bring us closer together, and what I know about me and Gerry is that the more the world dislocates, the more we come together.
There’s the funeral.
And then there’s something new.
We are sitting with Eddie’s parents, brother and sister in the family room, everyone stunned. Gerry is sorry that he wasn’t with Eddie when he was going home; he knows had he been out, he wouldn’t have let Eddie go home alone, he would have guided him to a taxi, put him in the back, brought him home. But what we both know is that Eddie knew that we were in love, Eddie loved that we were in love, he pushed us together, squished us together and sent us off. There’s no guilt to be felt, only a regret that Gerry couldn’t have made it all end better by saving Eddie.
‘If I regret not going to the club with Eddie, then I’d regret what happened between us that night,’ Gerry reasons when we’re alone. ‘And I don’t regret a second.’
Eddie’s mum brings us upstairs to show us the unopened gifts that are still covered in wrapping paper with unopened birthday cards. A pile of wrapped twenty-first presents that Eddie never even had the chance to open. His parents had brought them all home in a bin liner the night of the party.
‘I don’t know what to do with all of these,’ she says.
We look at them. There must be thirty or forty gifts piled high.
‘Do you want us to help you open them?’ Gerry asks.
‘And what will I do with them?’
We look around Eddie’s bedroom. It’s filled with Eddie’s things. Things he touched, loved, things that smell of him, hold his energy, mean something and have a story. Trophies, jerseys, posters, teddies, computer games, college books; the items that carry the essence of him. The unopened presents before us hold nothing of Eddie in them, they never had the chance to absorb his life.
‘Do you want us to give them back?’ I ask.
Gerry looks at me, aghast that I’ve said something so wrong, and for a moment I’m afraid I’ve misunderstood.
‘Would you?’ she asks.
I kneel down and open a small card tape to a wrapped gift, footballs decorating the blue paper.
‘Paul B,’ I read.
‘Paul Byrne,’ Gerry says. ‘Teammate.’
‘You know them all, Gerry,’ his aunt says.
‘All of them have cards,’ I say. ‘We could do it.’ I look at Gerry, who seems unsure. ‘A gift from Eddie back to his friends.’
I don’t know why I say it. I think it’s because I’m trying to sell it to Gerry, because I know it’s what his aunt wants, but after a while I start to believe it. ‘A final gift from Eddie from wherever he is.’
And Gerry clings to that. Over the next weeks we both embark on this mission to return the gifts given to Eddie. To identify the giver, locate them, and return them. And each gift tells a story about the person Eddie was. And the person giving it shares it with us, wants us to know. Why they chose it, the story behind it, and every reason is another moment that Eddie is alive. And even though they’re getting back their own present, they’re getting a piece of Eddie back. And they’ll keep it. It was Eddie’s gift, keeping it will keep him alive, whether it’s a football jersey, stupid novelty boxer shorts, or whether it’s a co
mpass from the uncle for the boy scout nephew so that he’d never again lose his way. Whatever it is, small or big, sentimental or jokey, it represents an acknowledgement of their friendship, and Gerry and I bring it to them, one summer when we’re on our school break. We have part-time jobs but we spend every available hour driving around in Gerry’s dad’s car with Gerry’s provisional licence, just me and him, doing this important adult thing with new-found freedom.
We melted and remoulded together. I watched it happen, I felt it happen. He was in my arms. He was in me.
Sex, death, love, life.
I’m sixteen. Gerry’s seventeen. Everything that breaks around us, glues us together even tighter, because no matter how chaotic, everyone has to find their hiding place or you can’t hear yourself think. Our hiding place is each other.
We create our space, and we live in it.
30
The bag of frozen peas defrosted overnight and left a damp patch at the end of the bed. The damp spot pervades my dreams; whenever my feet brush the wet area, I dream of my feet immersed in water, first a gentle walk on a beach, smooth spongey sand and sparkling water lapping in and out, then later poolside, my legs dangling, moving freely beneath the blue. Later, in a deeper darker sleep, I am held by the ankle, a tight grip on my sore throbbing spot, being dipped head first into the water like Achilles. The act is supposed to be making me stronger, but whoever is holding me by the ankle gets distracted, they dangle me for too long. I can’t breathe.
I awake with a fright, out of breath. Summer has brought a bright morning, birdsong, and a searing path of sunlight that pierces directly through the glass and on to my face as though a giant is crouched above me holding a magnifying glass. I block my eyes and try to fill my parched mouth with saliva. The sky is blue, a car alarm sounds nearby, a bird begins to echo the car alarm. A wood pigeon responds, a child laughs, a baby cries, a football is pummelled against a garden wall.
It has been a restless night. Thrown by Bert’s funeral and by feeling Gerry’s presence, I’m once again flattened by loss.
Postscript Page 20