Authors: Doreen Finn
Sally squeezes my arm as she leaves. Adam pulls away from his conversation with David. ‘What are you two chattering about?’
‘We’re talking, Adam. We don’t chatter. Remember talking? It’s what grown-ups do.’ She winks at me. ‘Goodbye, all.’
I invent an excuse to leave soon after. It’s too much, the wine, the weed, the poems, and I need to get out, walk, get cold air on my face, hear the sea move in the dimming light.
In the hall, Adam holds my coat for me. Manoeuvring my arms into the sleeves is difficult, and we both laugh at my repeated attempts. Then, when I’m finally buttoning it up, Adam stops laughing. ‘Listen, Eva, I’m sorry. About the wine.’ He shakes his head. ‘To be honest, I didn’t even think of it. That’s terrible, I know, but it’s the truth.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘But I do. I want you to like being around me, and you won’t if I produce the hard stuff every time.’
He really is so very handsome. His glasses have slipped slightly and he pushes them back up his nose. I read somewhere that that gesture betrays self-consciousness, that negotiators must never do it for fear of being exposed as weak, uncertain. On Adam, it simply adds to his charm.
The street lamps have already been lit, and a weak light glints through the glass panels in the door. Adam’s face is mottled by the shadowy glow. He leans his shoulder against the door.
I put my hand on the door handle. ‘Thanks for lunch. I like your friends.’
‘They like you too.’
As though on cue, David’s voice booms from the other room. ‘Christ almighty, man, would you ever let her leave?’
We smile at each other. Adam reaches out, pulls a strand of my hair and tugs on it. I put my hand to the clip that secures it at the back of my head. It’s too tangled to let him loosen it. He catches my hand, squeezes it. Then he kisses the backs of my fingers, one by one.
I could do this. I could stay here, in this spot, spinning the moment out. The light would fade further, David would change the CD inside and forget about us out here. I could maybe put a finger to Adam’s face, to those fine cheekbones, that thick auburn hair. How easy it would be. It has been so long since I last spent time with a new man that I’ve almost forgotten how inviting it can be, like falling into feathers or wrapping myself in silk.
Isaac isn’t coming back, no matter what fantasies I cultivate. It’s pointless keeping my body as some sort of forlorn shrine to him, rerunning over and over the same dark hurts. My hands are still full of grief; it spills over and soaks everything I touch.
I finger the ends of Adam’s shirt, the pale green-and-blue stripes of soft washed cotton. The last button is undone, and I can see his stomach, the skin, the line of hair that disappears into his jeans.
‘I like you, Doctor Perry. I like you a lot.’
I shake my head.
He puts his fingers under my chin and lifts my face. His green eyes are dotted with amber. ‘I do like you. And I want to know why you look so very sad at times.’
‘I don’t look sad.’
‘You do. And you don’t have to tell me, because it’s none of my business, but I’d like you to tell me, because you want to.’ His voice softens. ‘We’ve all been stamped on at some point in our lives.’
This isn’t where we were supposed to head. Lunch with his friends, that’s what he said. Not wine, weed and confession.
‘You’re great,’ I say. ‘Really.’
‘But this is the point where you tell me that you just want to be friends.’
‘No, nothing as prosaic as that.’
‘No clichés, Eva.’ He polishes his glasses with his shirt tail, revealing more of his skin. It’s smooth, olive-coloured. I touch my fingers to it.
‘I don’t peddle clichés.’
‘No, I know you don’t. Sally told me about your poetry.’
Without warning, the high is gone. That gorgeous, mellow calm has evaporated, and all that’s left is the headachy nausea of an imminent hangover. No poetry. I don’t want to talk about it.
Again, he tilts my chin. ‘No pressure. Not yet, anyway. But I want you to tell me what makes you tick.’
‘I will. But not now.’ I move away from him to the door. ‘Right now, I just need to go.’
‘I’ll see you on Monday,’ he says.
The door closes softly behind me.
CHAPTER 16
T
he miniature cars are in an old trunk. My mother must have moved them back into Andrew’s room at some point. His room is almost exactly as it was when he died. His old nameplate is propped up on a shelf,
Andrew’s Room
,
and a picture of a red vintage car illustrating the white ceramic tile. I trace it with my fingers, the black letters raised and bumpy.
I haven’t been in his room since I left Dublin all those years ago. On the day of Andrew’s funeral I’d sat on his bed, alone, shaking, my heavy winter coat doing nothing to chase away the chill. The door now creaks open, air spilling into the room. It is as it was all those years ago. Accessories dated, posters faded. A much younger Bruce Springsteen sulks on a promotional poster for his 1985 tour. Black Sabbath scowl at me, their hair and clothes laughable, hopelessly out of date.
I struggle to open the sash window. Years of being closed seem to suit it, and I break a fingernail before finally heaving it open. Outside it is starting to rain, the vague pattern of drops decorating the sill, disturbing the cobwebs in the wooden corners of the window frame. Traffic passes by in waves. I stand in my brother’s room for the first time in many years, yet the world turns as usual. Traffic lights change from red to green, the church bell chimes the hour, drivers switch on their windscreen wipers, and no one knows that I am here, loosening the sediment of years of loss, trying to blow it away, stop it clogging my lungs.
I think of my mother, touching her dead son’s things, old folders and notebooks from school that still bear his name, graffitied with band names, his books still on the shelves, his clothes still in his wardrobe, and I wonder how she bore it. I can hardly tolerate it, and I’ve lived thousands of miles away for years. Did she make his bed, wash his sheets? Did she keep the clothes that still hung in the wardrobe clean and pressed? I wondered if she played songs on his guitar, the pale Epiphone she’d bought him for his sixteenth birthday. It sits in its black case in the corner, the shroud that has kept the music from being played, the faint remnants of stickers in tacky circles around it.
I open the case, the catches rigid and old. The guitar has one broken string. It spirals downwards in a stiff curl. Without lifting it out of the case I strum the remaining strings, their discord matching the powdery gloom of the room. My brother would have hated the sound, would have covered his ears as he winced. He was extraordinarily fussy about music.
At his funeral a single trumpet soared from the balcony. Mahler’s Fifth, the opening trumpet tattoo, the intensity almost military. It had none of Wagner’s joy through tears, just plain sorrow. Exactly as it should have been. Andrew would have been pleased with my choice.
The priest read from the Book of Wisdom.
But the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest.
I’d closed my eyes. There would be no rest for me. No rest, only years of broken nights.
My mother, a day later, still numbed by Valium, put her hand on her heart. ‘Thank God that went well.’
Thank God? In my rage and my sorrow I forgot how I feared her. ‘Don’t be so stupid, Mother. It has nothing to do with God.’ I slammed out of the room before she could respond.
The rain patters on the floorboards. Reluctant to stem the flow of new air into the untenanted room, I half shut the window. The sky spills dingy drops down the panes, distorting the world beyond.
Slowly, I work the wire hangers out of my brother’s shirts, fold his jeans and put them all into bags. His two ties, kept for the rare occasions that required them, are rolled on the shelf. I finger the navy and green stripes on one tie, the red and grey of the other. Each went with his one suit, now hanging under cellophane in the corner of the wardrobe. Andrew had had little interest in clothes, would never have bought new ones if the old ones were still wearable. I loved that about him, his disinterest in the accumulation of possessions. Without examining the suit, I fold it in its covering and drop it into a bag. My instinct is to linger on his clothing, remembering times he had worn each one, but I’d never get anything done that way. His books and awards I stack in boxes for the attic. Pulling out my new phone, I call the St Vincent de Paul. I’m in luck. The pickup van is in the area and will be by this afternoon. Getting rid of everything quickly will leave no room to change my mind and hang everything up again. Two hours after I started the room is denuded, the bed stripped. The wall is cold against my back as I lean against it, surveying my work. My brother’s room is a shell, only the shelves and the bed remaining. It’s good to purge. Maybe I’ll even begin to move on, perhaps something will be dislodged and breathing will suddenly be easier. So much of Andrew has wedged itself within me, its awkward shape taking up too much space. Instead of dealing with it, I’ve simply accommodated it, allowed myself to grow around it. It’s been easier that way because I’ve been a coward. Not facing things head-on has allowed me to turn away. But everything catches up eventually. How much quicker my recovery would have been if only someone had told me that all those years ago. Deal with the pain. For my own sake, I must start to let him go.
I can only imagine my mother’s reaction to my disrobing of her house, the inky blackness of her outrage, her monotonous diatribe of the same tired grievances.
I don’t care any more.
CHAPTER 17
S
ean is standing at the bar. I peer at him through the throng. It’s definitely him. I am about to turn away, but it’s a small venue and he’s tall. He spots me. I salute him, and he pushes his way through the scrum.
‘Aoife!’ He bends to kiss my cheek. It’s something else I can’t quite get used to, this kissing I see people do here in social situations. New Yorkers do it, but it looks all wrong somehow when Irish people try it. It’s out of place, forced, just like the mid-Atlantic accents and fake tan that surround me. ‘What are you doing here?’
For a second, I panic. Am I too old to be here? Is he mocking me, the older woman, out on her own? I touch my hair, braided in an untidy plait.
Deconstructed
,
a fashion magazine, described a similar plait, something sexy and hurriedly thrown together. Who knows, maybe mine looks sexily dishevelled. Isaac loved my hair, its darkness, its curls. Like clearing out my brother’s room, doing something about my hair is a necessity. I take a huge swallow from my glass, allow the warmth of the whiskey to dampen the rising anxiety of being here alone. Alone and old. Another swallow and it recedes.
My name is Eva and I’m an alcoholic.
‘I hadn’t taken you for a jazz fan,’ Sean says, tipping his glass in my direction. ‘You’re more of a classical fan I’d have thought.’ He glugs his beer. ‘Classy lady, classy music.’
He is drunk. He is gorgeous. An untidy row of friendship bracelets circles his wrist, coloured strips of leather, rubber, braided threads. His shirt is fitted, grey, with a geometric pattern that makes my head hurt to look at it. ‘Who’re you with?’ He searches behind me for friends.
‘No one,’ I say. I dig my elbow gently in his ribs. ‘And it’s Eva.’
Sean nods. ‘Right. Eva. Sorry about that. I’ve had a few.’ He takes a drink, then points at me, his finger not quite straight, the beer sloshing around inside the glass. ‘Hey, I lost your number.’
I laugh. ‘Of course you did.’
He points at me again. ‘I actually did. Thought about dropping in to your house, but then I realised I didn’t know where you lived.’ His smile is blurred with drink. ‘I actually did.’
I pat his arm. ‘Of course you did.’
‘But here we are.’ He gulps at his beer. ‘And you’re looking good.’
I acknowledge the compliment with raised eyebrows.
‘Hey, don’t give me a look.’
‘What look?’ I sip again at my whiskey. The need for another already pulls at me. Slowly. I must take it slowly.
‘That female look. The one that says you know I’m bullshitting you. Even when I’m not.’
Another pat on his arm. ‘Don’t worry about it, Shane.’
His offence is almost comical. ‘It’s Sean. The name’s Sean.’
The club is packed, more of a bar, really, and a small one at that. The band is an underground New York avant-garde jazz ensemble, all wild improvisation and punk inflections. I used to see them play in lofts, huge industrial spaces dotted around Downtown. Isaac never got it, this crazy offshoot of jazz, but once or twice he came with me because I loved the music. He pretended to like it so he could seem more with it, less of a fatherly figure with his younger lover. Avant-garde in New York is a druggy scene, full of experimentation, the clubs awash with pills and anything else you might look for. Little separates it from the rave circuit. Looking around this small, crammed bar, nothing could have been further from Manhattan.
A girl jostles me. ‘Sorry!’ she says, her beer spilling on my arm. She mouths something else, but it is drowned in the noise of the band testing their instruments on the tiny stage. I wipe at the spreading wet patch on my sleeve.
‘You okay?’ Sean asks.
‘Fine, fine. It’s just a splash.’
‘What?’ He leans closer to me. I can smell liquor on his breath. I think of all the alcohol that surrounds me, the countless bottles on display behind the bar, the pints in people’s hands, the glasses on the tables. It’s not what those in recovery would call a supportive environment. For a second I wonder if I should leave, just turn around and walk out, but then the band starts tuning up, and I remember how much I love this music. So I stay. Sean remains beside me. He seems to have come alone too. It’s too loud for conversation now. The band launches into something fast, hot, intense. Some people dance, more continue their conversations as though nothing were happening on the crammed stage in front of them.
The crowd thickens, swells. The music sears the packed club. I finish my drink then fight my way to the bar, where I order two more, and a pint for Sean. I down the first, a double, catch my breath at the strength, then wend my way back to where Sean is nodding his head in rhythm to the insane beat.
His eyes widen as I hand him the glass. ‘Thanks!’ he shouts above the screech of a saxophone. ‘You didn’t have to.’
I sip my drink, wave away his thanks. He is intoxicated. It’s obvious in the wet look his eyes have, the way his rhythm is slightly off. I wonder about leaving him here, finding another spot on my own, but the club is too small, and it’s quite nice having someone to stand with who doesn’t appear to expect much in terms of conversation.
I brought Isaac to one session in an old firehouse, in an industrial zone down near the river. The building was let go sometime in the seventies, and had been squatted in by artists and musicians looking for a base. I knew from the moment we entered that bringing him had been a mistake. New York mixes generations much better than Ireland does, and it’s not unusual to see people of all ages at concerts or parties, but Isaac had only gone out of a desire to be with me, and much as he tried, he couldn’t get it. The trippy music, the flickering strobes, the intensity of the jazz itself, he hated it all. It wasn’t even the drugs, and there are usually enough drugs at these events to get you high just from breathing. Isaac was no prude, and had dropped enough acid in his youth to swear him off drugs forever, but he couldn’t get the music, the scene.
‘I’m too old,’ he kept saying. ‘I want to be in a nice quiet place, talking to you.’ He wasn’t sulky about it, just honest. He was in his late forties, fifteen years my senior. Initially it hadn’t seemed like much because we were so crazy about each other, but when it came to music and partying, the gap was undeniable. At least we both loved jazz, but Isaac had stuck with swing, bebop, the older forms, and hadn’t bothered to let his tastes evolve. I listen to it all, every type. Jazz is rich, a bitter liquid that flows all over me any time I listen to it, filling my mouth, my ears, even my eyes.
In the end, we’d left and gone back to my place. I hadn’t objected, hadn’t minded because being with him was what I had sought from the night. Having Isaac on a Saturday night was such a precious commodity that I left my heavy partying for the too numerous Saturdays when I was on my own.
The band is manic, all wailing brass and frenzied rhythms. I’m wasted. The bourbon slides around in my bloodstream, pulsing, racing. The club has darkened but the pace is quicker than ever. Sean grabs my arm, hustles me to one of very few tables in the place. I’m too drunk to resist, and it’s only when we sit on those small round stools that I realise how tired I am. Not sleeping well is a given, but lately I’ve been waking early, unable to fall back asleep. It happens more on nights when I haven’t had a few drinks, and this past week even when I have. I rest my elbows on the table, pushing empty glasses to the side and dropping my chin onto my hands. My eyes close.
The band breaks for a while. Sean drains his pint, slams the glass down. He glances over his shoulder at the bar.
‘Another one?’
I shake my head. It’s too intense, the music, the alcohol firing through my system. If I have any more I’ll be sick.
When the band strikes up again, it’s different. Slower. An old Gershwin standard, not instantly recognisable because of the trumpet, its long drawn-out notes, then the piano winding itself around the chords as the song builds. The music swells as the tenor sax picks up the tune, joined one by one by the double bass, the drums, the guitar, until the whole band is playing, led by the wail of the trumpet, building into a wall of solid sound. It transports me. This is jazz. No other music can do this to me, can capture me so completely. Isaac would change his mind about this band if he could hear this one song. Where is he now?
I sit up. Gershwin segues into another languid, protracted piece. A singer comes on. She is tall, red-haired and voluptuous, wearing a green satin dress that trails on the floor behind her. She moves slowly, keeping the beat with her hips. Her voice when she sings is warm and full, toying with the rhythm, and she smiles at the musicians as she leans into the microphone. She sings about adding initials to her monogram, her face a picture of sincerity.
In this instant I miss him more than I have at any point since we left each other. It’s been almost a year, but I’m appalled at how fresh the wound is, how it still bleeds when I poke at it. But I’m better off this way. Isaac bailed on me when I needed him. He bailed on our child. He cannot be in my life.
When the band finishes, Sean nudges me with his shoulder. ‘You asleep?’
I grope under the table for my bag and coat. When I stand, he stands too. ‘I’m off,’ I mutter, dragging on my navy coat. My fingers fumble with the buttons. A splash of something wet trails down one sleeve. My lovely coat. Cashmere and light wool. What was I thinking, leaving it on the floor to be trampled by careless feet?
‘Do you want to share a cab?’ Sean shrugs his arms into a black jacket. We are the only ones leaving. Two people stand behind us, waiting for our table.
‘I’d rather walk.’ A craving for cold air grabs me. A long walk, a clearing of my head, a glass of water. These are things that matter for now.
Sean accompanies me. We walk mostly in silence, both of us inebriated. My hands I keep deep in my pockets. Some generous soul kindly decided on a cashmere lining in each pocket. I run my fingers over its velvety softness. Sean offers bursts of conversation, to which I reply, but the bad part of being drunk is setting in now, leeching warmth from my bones. Nausea hints at what is to come.
It is freezing, like breathing icicles instead of air. Christmas parties spill out onto the streets. Girls in tiny dresses and bare legs, screaming with laughter, totter in jagged lines along the paths. Their huge platform shoes, bizarrely orthopaedic against the wispy dresses and furry jackets, cause more obstacles to staying upright than the bottles of lurid drinks swinging from ungloved hands. Everyone demanding their right to have a good time. Christmas lights are looped around street lamps, across buildings. They wink in shop windows. The wind is sharp, bowling litter along the paths. A cluster of stars is visible above the buildings. At the canal, we stop. Muffled music radiates from anonymous buildings. The weeping willows trail their empty branches in the blank water.
‘Will we get a last one?’ Sean gestures towards a pub. Its customers have disgorged themselves out onto the dark street. Cigarette ends glow, taxis are hailed. Under a street lamp a girl sits alone on a bench by the canal, her hair spread fanlike around her bare shoulders. She attempts to light a cigarette and fails, her blue lips shivering. Her enormous shoes lie discarded at the curb. Fake tan is streaky by her ankles. But for the ridiculous clothing, she could have been me at any time in my past. Alone, drunk, frozen.
‘I’d rather not. But you go if you want.’ The cold air is sobering me. I touch the girl on her arm. ‘Are you okay?’
She peers at me, suspicion in her drink-fogged eyes. ‘Fuck off.’
‘I only asked if you were okay.’
‘And I told you to fuck off, granny.’ Beside her on the bench her phone buzzes, a large, expensive rectangle of light. She answers it, dismissing me.
‘Come on,’ says Sean, draping his arm on my shoulder. ‘I’ll walk you home.’
An empty beer can floats on the corrugated surface of the canal. A refugee from the pub relieves himself into the water. Sean shouts at him, but the guy is too wasted to notice. The tinfoil moon sits right above us in a sky so clear it looks washed.
We walk on.
The house is in darkness. I dig in my bag for my keys. I forgot to leave the hall light on when I left earlier. Sean waits beside me. Our breath billows white clouds around us. Frost has already settled on the grass, thousands of diamonds winking in the half-light. My fingers are arthritic with cold. Suddenly, I don’t want to be alone in that house. It’s pulling me into its sticky web, enveloping me in its shadows. Impulsively, I turn to Sean. ‘Come in for a drink.’
I make hot whiskeys. The spice of the cloves and the warmth of the glass in my hands chase away the vestiges of cold. Sean takes the glass appreciatively. We sit in the tiny kitchen because it’s the only room that is not freezing. Of the five ancient storage heaters in the house, three have packed in, and I don’t have the money to replace them, or install proper heating. I turn on the oven and leave the door open, not caring if it makes me look like an eccentric. I have to do this or Sean would go home to his own heated house.
‘Any plans for Christmas?’ He fiddles with the dial on the radio. A twenty-four-hour Christmas station floods the kitchen with seasonal music. I assume he’ll change it, but he fixes the volume and leaves it.
I catch a clove between my teeth. ‘Not really. You?’
‘Just the usual. Parents, sister, that sort of thing. I’d better enjoy it, because with any luck I’ll be in Oz next year. No more cold winters for me.’
Maybe I should go too. Not with Sean, but somewhere. I don’t know if I can do New York again. I miss it more than I could have thought possible, but I can’t go back to what I had before. Too much has happened. I can’t creep around the English department, avoiding Isaac, blaming him for everything that went wrong. I want more than that. But my job, my lectures, my papers, everything I’ve been working towards.... I could move on, find another university. The States is packed with top-notch colleges, and Isaac would give me a reference. I wouldn’t have to start from zero again. It’s easy to leave. You just take one step, one foot in front of the other, and keep repeating until where you’re coming from is only a blur and where you’re going to is yet to be revealed.