Rules of the Road

by Ciara Geraghty

  I try to come up with a response to both texts, but in the end, I switch off the phone.

  where r u?

  There is no answer I can give that lends itself to the brevity of a text message.

  Obviously I could simply say, I’m in London, but that would lead to a deluge of other questions and it would be these subsequent questions that might prove difficult to answer.

  And it might implicate them.

  Does this mean Brendan is already implicated?

  And what about me? Could I go to gaol simply for being here, with Iris?

  Imagine the girls. Their mother in gaol.

  Kate’s career ruined before it even gets off the ground.

  And Anna, failing her exams for the first time in her life and her skin blighted with eczema.

  Iris tugs at my sleeve and I look up. ‘Are you okay?’ she mouths. I smile brightly and nod, toss my phone into my bag, and take an enormous gulp of my mocktail. The burn of tequila would be most welcome now. And I don’t even like tequila. I drank two on my eighteenth birthday at the insistence of my brother, who deemed it a rite-of-passage sort of a drink. I threw up in the smoking area where I had gone to get some fresh air, which I realise is a contradiction in terms. Hugh marched me home, then returned to the pub, since it was only 10 p.m. My mother couldn’t bring herself to give out to me, such was the sorry state I was in. She helped me to bed and told me she’d deal with me in the morning. But she never did. Perhaps she realised there was no need. And it’s true, I haven’t had tequila since.

  Jason Donovan turns out to be a soothing sort of a fellow. A comfort. When I accidentally catch his eye – he’s singing ‘Too Many Broken Hearts in the World’, if the chorus is anything to go by – he smiles and nods at me as if he knows me. Knows why I’m here. Is sure that everything will work out just fine.

  I have only vague recollections of him on Neighbours. I don’t remember watching a lot of telly when I was a teenager. I think it might be because I never recognised myself in any of the characters on any of the programmes that were geared towards my age group. The teenagers on the telly were rebellious, or funny, or smart. Some were all of those things. The quiet ones were only quiet for a short time before they, I don’t know, took off their glasses and pulled their ponytails out and allowed one of their girlfriends to apply make-up to their faces and then they weren’t quiet any more. They were rebellious or funny or smart and – now – heavily made-up.

  I suppose, if I’d had the language back then, I would have said that I didn’t relate to any of the teenage characters I saw on the telly.

  The weird thing is, I don’t remember feeling sad about it. Or alienated. And it’s true I didn’t have many friends, mostly because I found it difficult to know what to say in most social situations.

  I remember overhearing a conversation between Lisa Murphy and Siobhan McKenna on the sixth-year corridor on the way to our chemistry class. They were talking about the Debs dance. In fairness, they didn’t realise I was behind them.

  ‘… think everyone has a date, don’t they?’

  ‘Ah yeah, I think so. Apart from Terry, but I presume she’s not going is she?’

  ‘Not unless they let her bring her mother with her.’

  I remember the ease of their laughter so clearly. The casual cruelty of it. I slowed to allow other girls to pour into the space behind Lisa and Siobhan so they wouldn’t look behind them and suddenly realise.

  I shouldn’t have minded really. It was true; my mother was my best friend.

  Truth be told, she was a great best friend, my mother. She never made me feel peculiar.

  I knew at the time. That it was peculiar. A teenage girl whose best friend was her mother.

  But I never felt peculiar. Apart from those few times when I’d see myself as a third party, like that day on the sixth-year corridor on the way to chemistry class.

  Anyway, I didn’t bring my mother to the Debs dance. Of course I didn’t.

  I didn’t go. Mam took me to Seashells in Howth for dinner that night. It’s not there any more but, back in the day, it was quite the fancy affair. Attentive waiters in black suits and white dicky bows with linen napkins draped across their forearms. Hugh was in Boston that summer, on a J-1 Visa, and Dad was in the taxi, doing the night shift. I was glad. Dad wouldn’t have approved of me not going to the Debs dance. He would have agreed with Lisa and Siobhan and – let’s face it – most of the girls in my year. That I was peculiar.

  Jason Donovan strikes me as someone kind. I presume he was one of the popular guys in his class, but I also see him as someone who was kind to peculiar people. Is kind to them. Not that I’m peculiar as such. I manage to blend in now.

  I can see why Iris and her dad liked Jason so much. Especially on those long afternoons when Mr Armstrong’s memories were running out of his head faster than water out of a colander. How Jason, in all his blond-haired, blue-eyed, wide-smiled earnestness, must have seemed like a comfort, with his boy-next-door, familiar face.

  I look at Iris. She looks like an ordinary person on an ordinary night out. As do I. As does Dad.

  There does not appear to be anything peculiar about any of us.

  Iris smiles at me and I jerk my thumb towards the stage, then turn it upright and give the thumbs-up signal, which Jason sees. He rewards me with a smile so wide, it seems like it might slide off his face. I smile back, as wide a smile as I can manage. Anything narrower seems cruel.

  Even Dad seems smitten. He sings along at the top of his voice when Jason does a cover of ‘Only the Lonely’, oblivious to the daggers some members of the audience throw at him. Everything is going so well. I’ve even resigned myself to Vera’s no-show and am well on the way to convincing myself that it’s a good thing, her no-show.

  It’s for the best.

  And while I haven’t exactly forgotten what we’re doing here or where we’re going, I seem to have been able to tuck it behind other, less pressing worries. For the moment, at least. Worries like finding the car in the car park in Chinatown. I’m eighty-five per cent certain I’ll find it, in one piece. Iris took a photograph of the car, in its car park space, with the number of the space in clear view. And there’s a security guard on duty to keep an eye on everything so … it should all be fine.

  Needless to say, I am worrying about Brendan and the girls, especially about the girls’ text messages, which remain unanswered. But I’m not really worrying about them as such. As in, about anything happening to them in my absence. Like someone spiking the girls’ drinks with Rohypnol, or Brendan falling through an open manhole on his way to work. Not more so than usual, at any rate.

  So when Iris falls, on the way out of the theatre, I am completely unprepared.

  11

  ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BLIND SPOT.

  Iris falls on the stairs. Steps really. There are three of them, carpeted with a long tread and shallow rise, a metal handrail on either side. I walk in front of her, linking arms with Dad, who can become disoriented in crowds.

  Behind me, the sound. A sort of strangled yelp. I turn around. Iris is falling. She seems as surprised as I am by this turn of events. She doesn’t have time to put her arms out to protect herself. She falls like a felled tree. Almost effortless.

  A cracking sound. It’s the sound of Iris’s face hitting the metal handrail, if you can bear to think of that. She seems to bounce off it before she hits the ground, where she lies momentarily. In that moment, everything seems quiet. Muted. As if we are underwater. Even my initial movements towards her seem cumbersome and slow, as if I am submerged.

  ‘Iris!’ My shout seems to break through the wall of silence and the babble of the world is returned to me. I kneel beside her. Blood, hot and red, blooms along her forehead. Already a crowd has formed the obligatory circle around us. I check that Dad is there. He is. He is telling the woman beside him about Frank Sinatra. ‘… and he asked me if he could smoke in the cab so I said …’

  ‘Iris?’ I shout. ‘Can
you hear me? Are you okay?’

  The knee of her beautiful jade-green jumpsuit is torn, and there is an angry red carpet burn on her skin. Already her ankle, twisted at an awkward angle, is beginning to swell.

  ‘Terry, can you please help me up?’ Iris’s voice is stiff with pain.

  ‘It’s best if you don’t move, Iris. Not until the ambulance gets here.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere in an ambulance,’ says Iris.

  ‘But I think your ankle is broken. You’re probably concussed. And you might need stitches on your forehead, and …’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I just need to get my breath back.’

  She pushes herself into a sitting position, grips the metal bannister with her hand, and uses it to pull herself up.

  ‘Iris, please, I don’t think you should be moving.’

  She stands on her good leg. Well, her better one, at any rate. Leans against the wall.

  I rummage in my handbag, find a pack of tissues and hold one against Iris’s forehead. For a moment she lets me, leans into my hand and closes her eyes. Then she takes the tissue from me, presses it against the cut. Nearby, onlookers stare. Iris glares at them. ‘Show’s over, folks,’ she tells them.

  They lower their eyes, look away.

  I pick up Iris’s handbag.

  ‘Let’s go into the bathroom,’ I say. ‘I can wash your cut and take a look at your ankle.’

  ‘Can we just get out of here?’ says Iris. She is sheet-white and trying not to tremble.

  ‘You’re in shock. You need to sit down.’

  ‘Please Terry. I just want to go home.’

  Home? She can’t be talking about the Airbnb with the sterile kitchen. She must mean home home. Ireland. Dear old Dublin, which has never seemed as dear to me as it does now.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘I will.’ And there it is. All her grit. Her determination. Engrained in those two words.

  I hook my head under her arm, put my hand around her waist. ‘You sure you can manage?’ I ask.

  She nods, tries not to wince.

  I look at Dad. He’s still talking to the woman, whose face bears the familiar expression of a captive audience seeking release. ‘… and I said, Where to, Mr Sinatra? and he insisted I call him Frank, so I …’

  ‘Dad?’ I say.

  Dad looks at me, then back at the woman. ‘I have to …’ he begins, and the woman pounces into his sentence with a speedy, ‘Not at all, don’t worry about it,’ before she moves at pace away from the scene.

  Dad looks with curiosity at Iris’s matted hair, at her blood-streaked face. ‘Are we going home now?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Follow me, Dad.’ There is no point asking him to help me support Iris. He won’t know how.

  We make our way to the exit. Progress is slow. I try not to think of the impatient crowds behind us. Nor about the drizzle I can see through the open doors of the casino, and the lines of black cabs – all occupied – inching along the rain-slicked street.

  Outside, I shepherd us under the shelter of an awning, prop Iris against the wall. ‘Wait here,’ I say. ‘I’ll see if I can flag a taxi.’

  ‘I don’t need a taxi,’ says Iris.

  ‘I’m a taxi driver,’ says Dad.

  ‘You can’t walk to the car park,’ I say. ‘Look at your ankle. It’s the size of a watermelon.’

  ‘That’s an exaggeration,’ Iris says. ‘A grapefruit perhaps.’

  ‘Your mother loved grapefruit,’ Dad says.

  ‘She did,’ I say, surprised at his recollection. Although loved might be a little enthusiastic. But she ate it. For breakfast when she was on a diet. She’d last until Wednesday most weeks.

  ‘I’m pretty sure l can make it to the car,’ says Iris, reaching for the crutches in my hand.

  ‘What about your wrists?’ I say. Iris’s wrists are a favourite target of MS, which can make walking with the sticks difficult at the best of times. And this is not the best of times.

  ‘They’re …’ Iris hesitates, then says, ‘grand,’ and I wish so hard for a wheelchair that when I hear a bang and see a flash of light, I almost imagine a wheelchair has materialised in front of us, as if by magic. Isn’t that daft? The bang is from a backfiring engine and the flash of light is lightning. I listen for thunder, but hear none, although perhaps the backfiring engine has compromised my hearing.

  The rain intensifies and I close my eyes against the deluge, just for a second, just to get my bearings. Check my hearing hasn’t been compromised. Work out some plan.

  When I open my eyes, there is a woman standing in front of us. A tiny, thin, elderly woman in a fur coat, skinny black jeans, and black patent high heels. Her popsocks have slid down her bird-like legs and bunch in baggy folds around her bone-tight ankles. Over her head, she holds a leopard-print umbrella, sagging where some spokes have broken. The wisps of hair on her head are painted a bright, furious red, and, judging by the way she is squinting at us, I’d say she is a woman who has a prescription for glasses which she has never filled. A hand-rolled cigarette hangs from one corner of her pinched, parched mouth. The cigarette is pulpy with rain and it is just a matter of time before it dissolves onto the pavement.

  My first thought is, Wow. As high heels go, these ones are at the upper end of the scale. I am not a wearer of heels. Partly because of my height. But mostly because of my inability to walk in them and so I am impressed by other women’s proficiency in this regard.

  Before I can have a second thought, Iris, examining the woman with open hostility, says, ‘Vera?’

  Vera is here. She came. She came because I asked her to. And she was right. About the road to hell. Iris’s face is thunderous. ‘What are you doing here?’ A bead of blood clings to a strand of her hair, then drops onto her face, rolling down her cheek like a tear. She wipes it away with the back of her hand.

  ‘You don’t look so good, kid,’ says Vera, shaking her head so that the sharp bones in her neck protrude through the thin weave of her skin.

  ‘Don’t call me kid,’ says Iris.

  ‘I ain’t come for a fight,’ says Vera. ‘I only come ’cos she said.’ Vera points at me with the lit end of her cigarette. ‘Terry, ain’t it? She was very insistent on the blower.’

  ‘Oh. Hello. Vera,’ I say. ‘It’s … lovely to meet you.’ My voice is strangled. I can’t look at Iris.

  ‘Terry?’ Iris glares at me.

  ‘It’s raining,’ says Dad, as if he’s just noticed. He hates the rain, which is unfortunate given the inclement nature of Irish weather. ‘Does anyone have a … a …’ He makes a dome above his head with his arms.

  ‘You can get under mine, sweetheart. Or the three of us can shelter in my motor if you prefer.’ Vera nods towards a BMW, old enough to be called vintage, and rotted with rust. There are no hubcaps on any of the wheels and there is a substantial dent in the fender, which harks back to my point about Vera’s eyesight. The car is parked in a disabled parking spot, in front of the casino.

  ‘We don’t need to shelter,’ says Iris.

  ‘Suit yourself, lovie,’ says Vera.

  ‘Can’t you just call me by my name?’ says Iris. ‘You do remember it, don’t you?’

  I need to come up with something.

  It is Dad who comes up with something in the end. He sets off at a brisk trot towards Vera’s car.

  ‘Ooh, he’s keen,’ Vera says in a vaguely coquettish way, and my regret sharpens like a pencil in a parer.

  ‘Dad! Wait!’ I have to follow him. When he gets an idea into his head, he just keeps going. Like a lemming racing to the edge of a cliff.

  He reaches Vera’s car and yanks on the handle. ‘I can’t …’ He shakes his head, as if the rest of the sentence is stuck there, and he’s trying to dislodge it. He looks at me. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing here. Your mother will worry. I told her I’d be back soon.’ He starts to cry. Before he got dementia, I had never seen my father cry. Not when his mother died. Or his younger
brother. Not when Mam had the cancer scare that time.

  Now, he can cry. It’s a sad sound. Like he is overcome all of a sudden. Like the dementia shows its hand and Dad realises that nothing he plays can beat it.

  Dementia holds all the cards.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ I reach him, rub his arm. I’m supposed to distract and divert, but it’s not always easy to know how.

  What on earth was I thinking?

  Vera holds her umbrella over his head. ‘The car’s open, darling,’ she tells him. ‘It don’t lock no more, see?’ She opens the front passenger seat, smiles brightly at Dad. If she notices his tears, she doesn’t mention them. He doesn’t move, looks at Vera warily.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you outta the rain, eh? You hop in the front, all right? Keep me company, yeah?’ She pats the seat. ‘I’d say you was a right looker in your day, weren’t ya? Your Terry’s cut right out of you, ain’t she? She got your big blue eyes, didn’t she, eh?’

  Her tone is soothing, and Dad smiles through his tears and sits into the car. I look towards the theatre. ‘I’ll be back in a tick,’ I tell Dad. ‘Best take this,’ says Vera, pushing the umbrella into my hands.

  The rain beats like fists against the flimsy umbrella, which somehow endures. I stop in front of Iris, who is still under the awning.

  ‘Iris, I am so sorry. I was …’

  ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ Iris says to me.

  ‘I …’ What was I thinking? ‘I thought maybe … you’d like to see her. Just once. You know?’

  Iris shakes her head. ‘This isn’t an episode of The Brady Bunch, Terry. Where we discover that it was all just one big misunderstanding before we kiss and make up and promise to ring every Sunday and visit every bloody Christmas.’

  ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have phoned her.’

  ‘How did you even …’ Iris begins. Then she shakes her head. ‘No. Forget it. It doesn’t matter.’ The blood on her face has dried in long, crooked trails and her hair is plastered against her head.