The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes (2 page)

‘Where’s your deals now, God?’ she had screamed, in her empty local church, one day a year before, when Rabbit’s cancer had returned in her right breast and had metastasized into her liver. ‘You want the second breast? Take it, you greedy bastard, but don’t you dare take my girl. Do you hear me, ya—’

‘Ah, there you are, Molly.’ Father Frank had appeared out of thin air and pushed himself into the seat beside her. He rubbed his bad knee and put his hand to his grey hair, then knelt and leaned on the pew. She remained seated. He looked forward, saying nothing.

‘Not now,’ she’d said.

‘I heard.’

‘And . . .’

‘You’re angry, and you wanted to give the Baby Jesus the finger.’ He shook his head.

‘How did you know that?’ Molly asked, surprised and a little unnerved.

‘Sister Veronica was polishing the tabernacle.’

‘I didn’t see her.’

‘She’s like a ninja, that one.’ Now he rubbed his head. She wondered if he was getting a migraine – he suffered a lot with it. ‘Molly,’ he said, in a more serious tone, ‘I understand.’

‘No, you don’t, Frank.’

‘My mother died of cancer.’

‘Your mother was ninety-two.’

‘Love is love, Molly.’

‘No, it isn’t, and if you lived a life with love in it as opposed to simply preaching it, you’d understand that. You’ve never been a husband or father so, God love you, Frank, of all the people to try to comfort me, you really haven’t a clue.’

‘If that’s the way you feel, Molly.’

‘It is, and I’m sorry for it.’ She got up, leaving Father Frank dumbstruck. She hadn’t darkened the church door since. But Molly still prayed; she still believed.

Still, this emergency needed something more rational than prayer. She’d been researching Rabbit’s condition for four years. She’d looked at all the studies, the new drugs, the various trials, and knew more about genetic mapping than a second-year laboratory student.
There’s something we haven’t thought about, something we’re missing. It’s on the tip of me tongue. I just need to concentrate, work out the problem. It’s going to be OK
.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Rabbit asked.

‘What I’ll make for your daddy’s tea.’ Molly settled on the recliner.

‘Just bring home a curry,’ Rabbit suggested.

‘He’s getting a belly,’ Molly said.

‘Jaysus, Ma, he’s seventy-seven! Give him a break!’

‘I suppose I could give him a chicken curry with egg fried rice, and make him do four laps of the green afterwards.’

‘Or you could just let him be.’

‘Right, we’ll settle on two laps.’

As she spoke, a dark-haired nurse, with a suspect tan and a nice neat bun, entered the room carrying a chart. ‘Hiya, Rabbit, I’m Michelle. I just wanted to see if you were settling in and if we could go through your meds, once and once only. Then I promise I’ll leave you to it.’

‘No problem.’

‘Great. So far so good?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’m still alive so that’s a bonus.’

‘People usually make it past the door,’ Michelle said, and grinned.

‘I like her,’ Rabbit said to her ma.

‘She’s got a bit of shite to her, all right,’ Molly said.

‘And I take it having a bit of shite is a good thing?’ Michelle asked.

‘In our house it is,’ Rabbit said.

‘As the fuddy-duddy aristocrat said to his Jewish tailor, “Good-oh.”’ Michelle sat on the sofa. Rabbit and her mother caught each other’s eye and smiled.
Clearly a nutter
.

‘Any questions?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I’ll be here if you need me. Can we talk meds?’

‘I’m on a Fentanyl patch, OxyNorm liquid, Lyrica and Valium.’

‘Any laxatives?’

‘Oh, yes! How could I forget?’

Michelle nodded towards Rabbit’s leg. ‘How’s the wound post-surgery?’

‘Fine. No sign of infection.’

‘Good. So, the fracture was your first sign it had spread to the bones?’

‘They were monitoring high calcium levels the week before.’

‘How’s your pain level now?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Keep me posted.’

‘Will do.’

Michelle looked at her watch. ‘Hungry?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we’ve got bacon and spuds on the menu in an hour.’

‘Sounds repulsive.’

‘Bite your tongue. We’ve got the best chefs this side of the Liffey here,’ Michelle said, with mock disgust, then smiled. ‘You need anything – a back rub, a foot massage, a manicure, physio for that leg of yours – ring your bell.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’ She opened a window and left Molly to attend to her daughter’s bedclothes.

When Molly had finished, she went back to the recliner, sat down and watched as Rabbit’s eyes flitted between open and closed. ‘Davey’s on his way home, love. He’ll drop in later if you’re well enough,’ she said.

‘That’s nice.’ Rabbit was asleep almost before the words were out of her mouth.

The past and Johnny often waited for Rabbit in sleep. That afternoon, in her dream, he was sixteen, tall, beautiful, his soft curly brown hair resting on his shoulders. She was her younger self, and twelve-year-old Rabbit was a very different-looking girl from the paper-thin ghost that lay in the hospice bed. She was tall for her age but so thin her mother worried that the large space between her legs would affect her gait. ‘Walk in front of me, Rabbit,’ she’d say, and then to her friend Pauline, ‘Do you see what I’m sayin’, Pauline? A toddler could jog through that gap.’

‘Ah, not to worry, Molly. She’ll fill in,’ Pauline said, and she was right. Rabbit did fill in, but not for another three years, despite everything Molly cooked, baked and roasted in duck fat to add weight to her youngest child. Back then, Molly’s mantra was a simple one.

‘Rabbit, eat more. Grace, eat less. Davey, stop picking at your nose.’

Grace would complain and talk about unfairness, but Molly wasn’t interested. ‘You’re big-boned like your ma. Big bones equal small servings, so if you want to be your best self, live with it.’

Grace would continue to complain, but Rabbit didn’t feel sorry for her because, back then, when Rabbit was still so gawky, Grace was a real beauty. She had hips, breasts and luscious lips. She was a proper brunette with emerald-green eyes and, aged eighteen, Grace was a woman while Rabbit was still a child. Rabbit would often stare at Grace and wish,
If only I could lose me eye-patch, fill out a bit, darken me hair and plump up me lips. If only I could look like me sister.

The eye-patch was gone by the time she’d hit ten but Rabbit, although beautiful in her own right, would never look like her sister. Her poor eyesight didn’t help: the dark brown horn-rimmed spectacles dwarfed her tiny face. They were heavy and slipped down the bridge of her nose, so she spent a good deal of her time pushing them up. Sometimes, when she was thinking hard about something, she placed a finger on them, holding them tight against her face and scrunching her nose. Johnny was the first to call Mia ‘Rabbit’. She insisted on wearing her long mousy brown hair in two high bunches at either side of her head. To him, those bunches looked like rabbit’s ears and, with her glasses, she reminded him of Bugs Bunny in disguise.

Unwittingly, Johnny Faye was a trendsetter. If he decided patches were cool, within days everyone for miles wore patches. If he liked coats worn open and down to the ankles, or short silver jackets or woolly hats with diamonds, they became trendy without so much as a peep from the lads. It was simple. Johnny was cool so anything Johnny did, said or wore was cool. And when he coined the name Rabbit and Mia Hayes happily answered to it, everyone had followed suit within a week, including her own parents.

In Rabbit’s dream, Grace was dressed to the nines in a tight black dress, heels and big red lips. She was going out with a man she’d met at the disco and it was exciting to watch her get ready. Rabbit liked to sit in her room as she applied her makeup in the mirror. Grace didn’t mind, so long as Rabbit didn’t talk. Grace would turn the tape deck on her dressing-table up high and sing along to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’, then Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ ‘Brand New Friend’. She’d play them on repeat and, instead of wasting her own time holding down the rewind button, she’d make Rabbit do it.

‘Stop. Play. No. Rewind. OK, stop. No, rewind. Too far – go forward,’ she said, as she painted her eyelids. Happily Rabbit obeyed, pressing the buttons while her big sister transformed herself from beautiful to exquisite before her very eyes. Afterwards Rabbit followed Grace down the stairs and into the kitchen to where her brother Davey was eating his dinner with his earphones on. Davey always liked to eat alone. He’d wait until everyone else was done, then Ma would heat up his plate, he’d put on his earphones and shovel the food down his neck in the time it took to play two songs. Grace said goodbye to Ma and shouted the same to Da in the back room, watching the news. She didn’t bother saying a word to Davey because he wouldn’t have answered anyway.

Davey was sixteen, tall and skinny, like Rabbit. He had long, mousy brown hair, which hung past his shoulders. Despite incessant slagging from the lads, he insisted on wearing denim on denim. He sat chewing and rapping his knife on the table in time to the music playing in his ears.

Molly called after Grace, ‘Ask him for tea on Sunday.’

‘No way, Ma!’

‘I want to meet him.’

‘Not yet.’ Grace grabbed her coat.

Molly appeared with pink rubber gloves on. ‘Don’t make me track him down.’

‘Jesus, Ma, will you let me live?’ Grace opened the front door and sashayed down the path towards the little iron gate.

Molly sighed and headed back into the kitchen, but Rabbit followed Grace outside to where Johnny was sitting on the wall, playing guitar and waiting for her brother to finish his dinner. Grace said, ‘Hi,’ and he smiled at her, but, unlike the other boys’, his eyes didn’t follow her down the road. Instead he focused on Rabbit and patted the wall. ‘Rabbit,’ he said, and she sat down beside him.

‘Johnny.’

‘You look sad.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are.’

‘Not.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tell me.’

Rabbit’s eyes started to fill with big fat stupid tears and she couldn’t work out why. She really hadn’t known she was sad until Johnny had said it, and it was all a bit of a shock.

‘Spit it out,’ he added.

‘I wish I looked like Grace,’ Rabbit whispered, embarrassed.

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I do.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Do.’ Rabbit felt a little sulky but then Johnny grinned at her, and when he grinned the skin around his big brown eyes wrinkled slightly. It made her feel warm inside and out. Her cheeks flushed a little and her tummy flipped.

‘When you’re Grace’s age, you’ll be the most beautiful girl in Dublin, Rabbit Hayes,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nobody else quite like you.’

‘Liar,’ Rabbit said, biting her lip to curtail a spreading wide gummy smile.

‘Truth,’ he said.

She couldn’t think of anything to say so she punched him playfully on the arm, then pushed her spectacles onto the bridge of her nose and held them there while he played his guitar and sang a funny sweet song to her.

Jay, Francie and Louis arrived as Davey came out of the house. Jay and Francie, twins, were Johnny’s next-door neighbours, the heart and soul of his band. Jay played bass and Francie played guitar. It was Jay who had fought for Davey to be drummer after his audition hadn’t gone as planned: he was battling severe stomach cramps and shat himself halfway through the second song. Jay was blond, Francie was dark, and they were both handsome, with short hair, square jaws and a big build. They were also talkers: if they hadn’t chosen music, they could have been a pair of comedians in the morning – at least, that was what Rabbit’s ma always said. Louis was smaller and more serious. He played keyboards and fancied himself as the band leader, although nobody really listened to him even when he threatened to quit, which he did at least once a week. Once Rabbit had watched him lose it in the garage.

‘We could really have something here if yous would all stop mucking around,’ he’d shouted.

‘Stop crying, Free Fatty,’ Jay had said. Louis wasn’t fat, just short and blocky. Francie had observed that he looked like a thin guy who’d eaten a fat one. Since then, much to his annoyance, the lads had insisted on calling him Free Fatty. It was harsh, but not as harsh as Davey’s nickname. Back then, Davey was so thin his hooked nose looked too big for his face. After his audition, when he was walking out of the door with a load in his pants and four fellas crying tears of laughter, Jay called after him, ‘Here, Big Bird, come back when you’re cleaned out.’

‘Big Bird? He looks like a dead fucking bird,’ Francie said, and the twins had called him DB ever since.

Davey didn’t like Rabbit hanging out with the band, so he was quick to tell her to get lost. The lads liked to sit on the wall, chatting, catching up and watching the girls go by before they went into Davey’s garage to practise for a few hours. Davey’s parents were really supportive of the band. His da was a big music fan and his ma was a fan of anything that didn’t include her son washing dishes for a living. Davey got himself thrown out of school when he was thirteen by punching a geography teacher in the face when he’d tried to drop a hand down his pants during a detention. At the time Davey wouldn’t say what had driven him to such an extreme, and word passed around the local schools that his attack had been unprovoked. When no local school would take him in, he had discovered his passion for music. Davey’s first set of drums was a phone book he practised on morning, noon and night, and from the start it was obvious he was gifted. For his fourteenth birthday his da arrived home with a beautiful red drum kit and Davey was so happy he burst into tears. When he played that evening, his parents agreed that, whatever it took, they’d get him to where he wanted to go.

When he joined the band, Davey’s parents could see that they had something – good songs, good musicianship, good work ethic – but, more than that, they had Johnny Faye. If ever a star was born, it was Johnny. He was the real deal. Davey’s da spotted his potential the first time he watched their acoustic set in the local hall one Sunday afternoon. That night they cleaned out the garage, put in heaters, then lined it with egg boxes and heavy draping to soundproof it. Two weeks later, Davey became Kitchen Sink’s new drummer; his family’s garage became their official rehearsal room, Molly and Jack Hayes their biggest supporters.