Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
“I really liked
you,” I say, fighting to keep my voice level. “I liked you more than I meant
to. But I can’t handle all this. I wanted it to be simple, like you said, but I
can’t pretend none of this has affected me.”
Liam shakes his
head and exhales aggravation. “Natalie’s filled your head with lies, but the
truth is nothing’s changed from the last time I saw you. Can we not just spend
some time together and you’ll see that for yourself?”
“For
what?” I ask with an emotional shrug of my shoulders. “What’s the point? It’s
not like it’s building into anything. It was never supposed to be this much
work.”
Liam blinks
slowly, his expression turning distant and pensive. “I knew it would be like
this with you,” he says quietly and with a measure of regret. “I could see it a
million miles away and I walked straight into it anyway.”
“Don’t hang this
all on me, Liam. The amount of baggage you’re carrying around behind you
wouldn’t be easy for
anyone
to deal with.”
Liam’s gaze is
dismissive and angry. “Everybody has a past. Maybe not your saint boyfriend,
but everyone else.”
My fingertips
tingle and my face smarts. “The problem with your past is that it isn’t
actually
past
,” I counter. “It’s still here in the present. Your ex
isn’t finished with you and for all I know the others aren’t either. And you
have people stalking you, snapping pictures, ripping into the details of your
life. Who would want that?”
Liam, unsmiling,
chuckles wryly. “If there’s one of us whose past is overshadowing the present
you can be sure you win the crown, Leah.”
I swing the car
door open before the conversation can descend into a full-fledged argument that
neither of us will win. In a heartbeat I’m standing on the driveway, slamming
the door behind me and striding for the house, but Liam, on the driver side, is
closer to the front door and he intercepts me by the porch steps and says, “Is
this really it then? Is that what you want?”
Flakes fall
softly all around us, lending the scene a dreamlike quality it shouldn’t have.
Liam grasps my arm, cutting through the atmosphere with an electric glare. “I stayed
these extra days for you,” he tells me. “I’m sorry about Natalie and sorry it
hasn’t been easier, but it doesn’t have to end like this.”
I don’t want it
to end badly either but it feels as though that’s already happened, and I know
I can’t climb back into his car and let him take me somewhere. That would feel
more wrong than this, like a betrayal of myself.
“I’m sorry,” I
say, his hand still on my arm. “I can’t.”
“You
won’t
,”
he corrects, releasing me with a burst of disdain. Liam cocks his head up with
a finality that signals we really have reached the end. “The minute you have to
try at this you don’t want it. So all right then, have it your bloody way. I
hope you’re easier on whoever you take down to the lighthouse next.” He turns
his back to me and shouts, in the direction of the road, “Have a nice life,
Leah!”
I tromp inside
without giving him another look. From behind the front door, where I’m pulling
off my leather boots, I hear Liam start the engine and reverse down the
driveway. Then I take my tissues and my cold remedy and climb into bed with my
eyes dry but a knot in my throat that I feel as if I’ll never be able to untie.
The snow continues to fall all
day as I sleep, but by the next afternoon when I walk to work, it’s turned into
puddles. My nose is still stuffy, but for the most part the other cold symptoms
have subsided, and for several days after that I’m sure I did the right in
letting Liam go. Yunhee agrees, confessing that she’s looked Liam up on the
Internet and that he sounds like trouble. She says that whether that’s due to
his fiancée running around on him or not, the fact of him being trouble
remains. But I know if there was an article about me up on the Internet many
people would be judgmental about my actions since Bastien died too. Still, my
head feels clearer after leaving Liam behind. Or to put my feelings into terms
Liam himself could relate to, he’d become a source of confusion and I can’t
have that.
Life is quiet
for a while and then, three days after our break-up, Liam calls my cell. I
don’t pick up and he doesn’t text me or call again. I occupy myself with work
and another night out with Katie. O’Keefe’s is busier than usual and stocked to
overflow with special Christmas collections of chocolates and biscuits. Marta’s
ordered a more extensive selection of DVDs for the season and package upon
package of Christmas pudding. Louise buys one to bring to work for her fellow
employees to enjoy, although she also plans to bake one from scratch for her
and Simon. Ananya, a regular who grew up in London, buys two to serve to her
extended family. I also purchase two and set them aside to bring home to my
parents and Bastien’s family.
In less than two
weeks I’ll be with them all, and on Sunday, after work, I call Bastien’s mother
in Burnaby to tell her I’m looking forward to seeing them soon and will bring a
couple more of Bastien’s things with me, including some of his sketches and
laptop. Joyce asks if I would like to come for dinner on Christmas Eve. She
says that each Christmas Eve they go to midnight mass and that if I would like
to attend with them, they would be happy to have me along.
I say I’d like
that because I want to do something that will bring me closer to Bastien’s
family. With them being on the opposite coast I’ve never gotten to know them
like I would’ve if we’d stayed in Burnaby. Last year Bastien went to midnight
mass with his family while I stayed home with mine. He told me his favorite
part of Christmas Eve mass each year was listening to the choir sing carols, in
particular “Carol of the Bells” because of its intensity.
Last December my
life was entirely different, and yet, even with Bastien missing, the present
manages to feels like Christmastime. Marta has brought in a stack of Christmas
CDs to play and whenever I’m at O’Keefe’s now my ears are filled with the sound
of the Spice Girls singing “Sleigh Ride,” Nat King Cole’s rendition of “Frosty
the Snowman” or Sinead O’Connor’s beautifully haunting version of “Silent
Night.” Festive lights line the streets and trees. An enormous fir has been
erected in the square near Liam’s apartment. I think of him when I stroll by
it. I think of him, too, whenever anyone comes to the counter with Bourbon
Creams or when I hear Sinead O’Connor singing “all is calm”, because she sings
the word ‘calm’ with what I now recognize as an Irish pronunciation.
I wonder what
Liam’s Christmas back in Dublin will be like and find myself hoping it will be
a happy one. There’s no question that my life is more peaceful without him, but
when I’m lying in bed at night and there’s nothing to stop me thinking except
my own willpower, sometimes I cave in and let my mind rest on him for a while.
How he held on to me that night on Abigail’s couch. How he talked about his
niece Jack. And how completely mesmerizing he looked when he touched himself
not so very long ago. I wish I’d gone to see him in
Philadelphia, Here I
Come
regardless of what Natalie said. I feel as though I missed out never
having seen him play Gar.
One of the other
things that I think about in relation to Liam is how in the end I couldn’t play
by our (mostly unspoken) rules about keeping things simple. I’m not ready to be
serious about anyone like I was about Bastien, but it turns out that I don’t
want to share Liam either. As short-lived and casual as we were meant to be, I
wanted to be the only one.
We never said
we’d be monogamous—and maybe he was anyway—but pondering that always leads me
to the conclusion that whatever Liam has or hasn’t done, he was right about me
being confused. I shouldn’t have leapt at him that night on the pier, shouldn’t
have asked him to come over and keep me company when I was waiting for word on
Yunhee, and shouldn’t have argued with him when he said I didn’t really want
this.
Because it turns
out that was true. I wanted him to be exactly what I needed and nothing else.
The physical part was easy, because I always wanted him so much, but I wanted
to keep the rest of my feelings safely contained. I wanted him to be likeable
but straightforward and ready to fade into the distance before I had a chance
to become too fond of him.
He was never
supposed to matter. He was meant to be my version of a rebound guy.
I don’t know
where the real fault lies for what happened to us—it could well be that half of
it is mine—but I know Liam’s leaving in four days and that if I don’t see him
again and say goodbye properly, like I’m saying goodbye to someone who was my
friend for a time, I’ll regret it. And life is too short for that. He or I
could be dead tomorrow.
So on Thursday
after work when Marta would ordinarily give me a ride home I tell her I’m
heading over to the library for a couple of hours. Then I call Liam’s cell
phone. It goes directly to a generic systems message that says: “The customer
you have dialed is currently not available. Please try your call again later.”
Having made my
decision, I don’t want to wait for later. I walk straight to Liam’s apartment
and tap in his buzz code. There’s no answer there either, but soon an older
woman with long silver hair and a Toy Poodle in her arms
brushes
by me, opening the security door with a swipe of her key card. I follow her
into the lobby where she narrows her eyes in reproach as she looks at me. I
ignore her and climb into the elevator, along with her and her dog, where she
continues to give me the evil eye until I step off the elevator on the third
floor.
There, I rap
firmly at Liam’s door, aware that he may prefer to ignore me if possible.
Across the hall, a heavyset man of about fifty pulls his own door open and
asks, “Are you looking for the Irish guy that lived there?”
I nod,
momentarily sorry that I’ve been so aggressive about knocking that apparently
the entire floor has heard me.
“He’s gone back
to Ireland,” the man tells me, watching my chin drop.
“Are you sure?”
I ask. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to leave until the nineteenth.” I’m
certain that was the day Liam told me he’d booked his flight for.
“Didn’t talk to
him myself but the wife said she ran into him in the elevator a few days back
with his suitcase. She thought maybe he was heading someplace sunny for a
winter vacation, but he told her he was going home. Moving out.”
Once I found out
Liam wasn’t back together with Natalie it never occurred to me that he would
change his flight. I’d assumed he wanted to stay away from Ireland for as long
as possible—with or without me. But now I understand why my call didn’t go to
his voice mail like it usually would’ve. His local cell phone service must be
in the process of being canceled.
“Thank you,” I say
to the man.
“Sure. Sorry to
be the bearer of bad news.”
I offer the man
a stiff smile and turn to walk towards the elevator, disappointment stealing
into my limbs. I’m too late. How is it that I can move both too quickly and too
slowly with the same person?
I can’t believe
that I’ll never be inside that apartment with Liam again. It’s strange to
imagine someone else inhabiting the place where we shared such good times
together. It feels wrong.
I’ve believed it
was over twice already—the day I met Natalie and the day Liam and I fought in
my driveway—but this third time is the hardest because he’s thousands of miles
away, where there’s no chance I’ll run into him in the street, and not much
more of a chance that he’ll ever call. I think back to the phone call that came
in from him on my cell last Saturday. Maybe he would’ve told me he was leaving
if I’d picked up.
My eyes smart
with tears as I begin to walk up Allan Street, remembering everything from the
very beginning—the day he glanced down at my T-shirt and then swiftly looked
away.
There has to be
something I can do to change the note we ended on. Liam’s not dead; he’s only
in another country. He’d have an agent in Ireland that I could email or write
to him in care of, but he’d probably never receive the message and any
correspondence sent to him via
Six West’s
mailing address would be even
more likely to go unnoticed. Liam said he lived in an area of Dublin called
Dundrum, but I’m sure his phone number would be unlisted.
However, he has
a sister named Alison with a cupcake business in a section of Dublin he
referred to as Temple Bar. That’s the most useful bit of information I have and
when I reach home I grab my laptop and hurry to Starbucks to jump onto the
Internet and search out Alison. An article about a store called Fairy-Bit
Cupcakes pops up in response. It appeared in The Irish Independent over two
years ago and lists Alison’s surname as Byrne, but mentions that her brother
Liam Kellehan is one of the stars of
Six West
. I look up Fairy-Bit
Cupcakes in Temple Bar and land on the company website, where I head straight
to the contact info. The complete address is listed as:
Fairy-Bit Cupcakes Ltd
15B Crown Alley
Temple Bar
Dublin 2
Co. Dublin
There’s also a
Fairy-Bit Cupcakes phone number and an email address that begins with “info@.”
But if I call or email the store the person I’ll end up speaking to could just
as easily be someone other than Alison. In the event that I was lucky enough to
get her on the phone she’d probably write me off as a rabid fan anyway. The
sanest thing to do is send her snail mail, and once I’m back sitting on
Abigail’s couch with a pen, paper and two envelopes, I write Alison Byrne’s
name on the first envelope along with the Fairy-Bit Cupcakes address. Then I
jot out what I hope is a convincing letter to Alison explaining that I became
friends with Liam while he was living in Oakville and starring in
Philadelphia,
Here I Come,
but that I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye and that I
would very much appreciate it if she would pass on my letter to him. I
apologize for having to contact her but say that he’d mentioned her and I
didn’t have an opportunity to get his Dublin address before he left. I don’t
tell her we were involved or stress that it’s important she give him my note,
fearing that any urgency on my part will lower the odds that she’ll give him my
letter. I sign my name, along with Abigail’s full address and my cell phone
number and email address, in the hopes that my contact information will lend my
request some credibility.