And Then We Fall

by Bryce Taylor

  "Don't you ever be sorry for someone like me," she says, her eyes chastising herself, looking regretful.

  I go back to my lonely bed but wake in the early morning light from intense dreams about Leigh, so real I can feel her body against mine, my arms around her shoulders, the smell of her hair soft against my cheek. I try to stay just asleep enough to keep the illusion of her with me but all too soon she is gone.

  Chapter 17

  The next day I'm asleep on the couch, waiting for Leigh to get home and I awake partially, cosily, to see Leigh on her knees beside me, looking down at me, her blue eyes agonised, staring at me is if I could be her salvation. My hand is resting lightly on her face of its own volition, memorising her features, how perfect each part of her is, that there is a fragility to her that I had never seen before.

  I pull her sleepily, tug at her, press her lips to mine, feel her give into me, her body letting go, letting me lead this and we are kissing, truly kissing for the first time, a real kiss, just for the pure enjoyment of it.

  My lips are capturing hers in mine and my thumbs are caressing her cheekbones and there is just the tiniest taste now and then of the edge of teeth, the tip of a tongue. My nose nuzzling against her, exploratory kisses that you have a thousand times in the beginning of a relationship, a hundred times before you've ever slept together, well before you discover the shortcuts to passion.

  I try to bring her onto the couch, to lay her body against mine and she resists, just a little, enough that I know that a large part of her despises this affection and I can feel the pain of her defences growing inside of me an aching in my heart that is splintering at my elbows, at each joint, tears threatening to spill forth. That I know I am not strong enough to fix this, I'm not strong enough to fix myself, I can't be strong for Leigh too.

  Leigh lowers her head, breaking the kiss, resting her forehead on mine, her eyes shutting and I can feel her body trembling slightly, shaking, fighting to reject these feelings that are causing her so much hurt and confusion.

  I sit up and pull her firmly onto the couch, ignoring her tense body, folding her into me, waiting for her to draw her legs protectively against her chest, wrapping myself around her.

  I don't say anything, I don't kiss her and I don't caress her hair, I just let her be. Let us both take solace in the small comfort of the warmth of two bodies entwined. Feeling the jerkiness of each of her breaths.

  Only I already know that this isn't enough and it isn't ever going to be enough. Both of us feeling the futility of all of this, knowing that we are going to lose this, that we only have a few more short days or weeks until all of this disappears and is forgotten.

  Leigh gets up, turns to look down at me, her hands clenched at her sides, the tendons in her neck standing out as she shakes her head, unable to articulate what she needs to.

  "I'm sorry," she says painfully after a long moment.

  She takes a long breath and shuts her eyes.

  "I'm sorry, I only," she says her eyes on my mine, blue and broken, shards of glass.

  She turns on her heel and leaves, not even able to stay here in this house with me for one more moment.

  I lay on the couch for hours, unable to move, lost without her and lost with her.

  Chapter 18

  I book a flight home that day, knowing that if I don't do it now it is only going to hurt more, that if I leave now it might be the last moment I have that I can make this choice without everything falling and breaking apart, hurting me irreparably.

  Hurting Leigh more than I already have, even if I barely understand why. Because it is clear that I am killing her, that she isn't going to choose me, but she will try and satisfy me at the cost of herself.

  In a few short days I'll be gone and it seems far too long, that if I had the money I would be gone today. Ironically, I only have the money to go at all because I have been living rent free with her.

  I sort through my few possessions, give away the tiniest number of things, some books and a picture, a couple of t-shirts. The rest somehow fits still in the same bags I brought less than a year ago. Seven short months, going the other way now, from Australian winter to Irish summer. I check the weather and find that it is still warmer here than in Dublin.

  I don't even have to resign from my job, I just notify the agency who placed me that I no longer need more shifts. The university course I had already given up on two weeks ago, no one ever got in contact to see if I was coming back.

  I text Leigh and tell her that I need to see her. She replies that she can be in tomorrow morning if that is ok? I think that this is perfect, no dragging it out. I'll tell her and be gone before she feels it.

  I write her a note in the cover of my copy of Finnegan's Wake the one that I brought all the way here from Ireland for no reason.

  Dear Leigh,

  There is so much that I want to tell you here, to spill out in a flood but I don't want to leave you with words, I'd rather leave you with memories of the good times.

  That day at the beach, your birthday and mine, all these moments we have shared.

  All I want is to leave you with one thought; that you are worthy. You are worth loving and that you are worthy of happiness. That for a few short months I have loved you most and I won't ever regret that.

  Your friend,

  Aednat

  Leigh walks in the door the next morning as I am checking my ticket, my passport.

  She takes one look at me, at the bags next to the table, her eyes returning to mine.

  "You are breaking my heart," she tells me softly, words falling from unwilling lips. That the part of her telling her that she should just let go, that this is the easiest way isn't yet in control.

  "I'm not," I reply, tears already trickling down my nose, "I'm breaking down the walls around it. I'm giving you a reason to change."

  Not for me, it is too late for that, but for someone else, some future woman who Leigh will let into her heart.

  "What do you want?" she rasps out, the words torn from unwilling lips. "What will make you stay?"

  "Leigh," I say angrily, incensed now, "I only wanted what you were willing to give."

  I did, but I couldn't respect myself for it in the end. I shouldn't be making this sound as if it is her fault.

  In her defence she doesn't even try to blame me or remind me that I said I was ok with what she had left over.

  She also doesn't, can't and won't promise what she isn't going to deliver on.

  We promise to always be friends, that we will write each other every month. I give her my mother's address on the back of shopping receipt and she holds it carefully between her thumb and index finger in a hand that is white-knuckled.

  Leigh steps forward quickly and hugs me tightly and I'm afraid I'll cry again, so after a moment, I push her away.

  I cry all the way to the airport in the cab, silently, the driver pretending he can't see but then the practicalities of security and boarding distract me and the tears don't come back for days and days.

  I stay at Mam's house for the first few weeks and it is even worse than I remember it, the smoking and the clutter and Daniel. My disruption to his life makes him even worse than usual, both of us unbearable to the other. I find the drive to search for a job, willing to take anything to necessitate the need to leave.

  In the second week I finally get around to emptying my suitcase and as I'm turning out a pair of jeans that I last wore months ago I find the folded hems dusted with a sprinkling of white sand, a reminder of where I could be and where I am now. That anyone else would have chosen the path to be living in the beachside mansion of a sexy surgeon who would do almost anything for you and yet here I am in bloody Mallow, sleeping on the couch, stinking of cigarette smoke and my heart is aching and empty.

  Because I'd rather have lost her altogether than be losing her slowly for time never ending.

  The next day I get an offer of a job in a small hospital in Dublin and I am gone on the first bus the next
day, unwilling to even wait for the weekend, taking a spare room in a friend's house until I get settled.

  Chapter 19

  I arrive back in Dublin at the end of a hard winter, with a body used to sunshine and dry heat, not to ever present clouds and endless cool drizzle. It isn't till I make a few friends at work that I start to feel home again, to appreciate the verdant green everywhere and the lilt of Irish voices, the joy of an actual Irish pub.

  Of people pronouncing my name correctly.

  I have two very short relationships with women, one a fellow nurse and the other a beautiful Spanish woman I meet on the bus as we bond over the books that we are reading. They both are far too everything that Leigh is not.

  Somehow now that I will never see Leigh again, it is a deficiency that they are always available, that their affection is too easily won, that they express every thought and feeling in their heads. That they take everything that I offer and return it in equal measure.

  That in truth they want more than I have to offer and more than I want from them.

  That they don't allow me any secrets in the corners of my soul, they see my anxieties and fears and have all too much sympathy and understanding and I hate it.

  Diarmuid who had fled Ireland after his father died, comes home to Dublin with a pretty Croatian girl he met in Paris and for almost a year we are, all three, the best of friends, sharing a house and our lives, going to bands and picnics and sitting around our kitchen table talking for hours and hours. I think that they will get married soon and I am happy for them.

  Then one day she is sick of Ireland and cannot conceive of another winter and just like that she is gone. Diarmuid is heartbroken but unwilling to leave Ireland again.

  Not even for her.

  We move to a smaller flat with cheaper rent and he gets a post as a drama teacher at the local college and both of us start to feel as if time is passing us by.

  Chapter 20

  Diarmuid and I get together. A little by accident, a little by design, one night after a few too many drinks, both of us already knowing that it is going to happen, feeling the undercurrent of changing dynamics between us. We are lonely and we love each other already, the cool, dark endless love of a pond in spring. We complete each other's sentences and laugh at the same tv shows. We race around the supermarket like children.

  Diarmuid who has been my best friend for so long, who always knows what I am thinking and feeling, whose hair is so soft and silken I can't ever stop running my fingers through it even though it drives him crazy.

  If we don't have passionate, mind-blowing sex on the stairs or feel an intense magnetic heat for each other it doesn't matter. Because he is there in the morning and when I get home from work. We have a circle of friends who share our love of music and pubs and art. We share the cooking and cleaning with the simplicity of long-term flatmates. We make each other happy. And when he snuggles up to me at night I push my body hard against his until we fit together perfectly.

  Katie comes and visits Ireland for the first time since I've come home and our dynamic has changed completely. She is pregnant with her first child and watches us drink and talk of things she doesn't know of. Her boyfriend is beautiful and taciturn and watches Katie with a fascination that seems silly. They go home, to their new home, to Barcelona and we drift apart. Not deliberately, but the effect is the same, a loss of one part of our triad.

  Diarmuid and I have a good life, nights out in Dublin, with his theatre friends and my nursing ones. Work is a drudge and I think sometimes both of us wonder how we got here.

  I fall pregnant and we decide why not? If not now than when? Neither of us has anything better to do. She is born in the spring after the easiest pregnancy. A perfect little mite who brings hope and joy to our house, who surprises us with her relentless good humour. Little Emily whose smiles remind us how good life is. Neither of us knows where her red hair has come from but she has his wide smile and good humour and my sharp intellect and jagged corners.

  We move to Mallow to be closer to Mam, I get a job as public health nurse and Diarmuid an office job in Cork. Diarmuid is more forgiving and sympathetic to Mam and Daniel than I am myself, now that he has no family he treasures the idea of a bigger family to raise Em in.

  I miss Leigh sometimes. Inappropriately. When no one has listened, really listened to me in days. When I wake in the morning before I remember where or who I am. Just before I fall asleep, a small wish that she is happy taking flight, across the oceans. Worst in the midst of dutiful sex, when I'm faking an orgasm to hurry Diarmuid up.

  The rest of the time though I have put her firmly from my mind. She doesn't belong here. Not in this life and not in our little family and routines.

  Diarmuid becomes sick and I stop thinking of her at all. Between my mother, brother, daughter and partner I can barely remember anything of myself, I switch to autopilot, letting what needs doing be my guiding light and forget all else.

  Diarmuid proposes and how can I say no? It's a tiny wedding. A few friends and a picnic in the park after, a few happy tears and a few sad ones when I look at him, really look and see how thin he has become. Katie comes for the day and is busy with her baby and her toddler, both of us distracted enough that the short sentences we share is not enough to bridge the gap between us. Not even her shock of how Diarmuid looks with his wasted body and shaved head.

  Nothing changes after the wedding, there is a ring on my finger that I feel a small pang of guilt and happiness when I take it off to do the dishes or shower. I don't change my name which reminds me of how conservative Ireland is of these things, that even Diarmuid secretly wishes that I would.

  We don't argue about it though, Diarmuid never was one to raise his voice and I have mellowed or I don't care, I don't even know.

  As he gets worse, as the tumours are excised and reappear, as I feel him slipping from me, my best friend, my rock, I lose more of myself. I become the perfect person. The perfect mother. The perfect wife. The perfect daughter. Nothing unto nothing.

  We battle on for a year. I am down to three days a week in my job, sandwiching it in between crèche, scans, appointments, hospital stays, Mam and an increasingly difficult Daniel. Diarmuid is permanently strong and good humoured through the worst of it. Cheering me up as if I am the one slowly dying. Wasting away and disappearing from the corporeal world, more hollow cheeked and ghostly with each passing day.

  He fights bravely through one treatment and the next and if the disease had a heart it would give up and retreat. It would give him back to me because now that he is asleep more than he is awake I miss him desperately.

  I miss the conversation and his hands laced through mine. While he is sleeping I run my hands over his head, the stubble soft under my fingers and feel an ache in my heart of loss before he is even gone.

  Diarmuid dies easily, in the most mundane fashion, sleeping and then not whilst I am in Em's room getting her dressed for the day. A bright July morning when I know the end is in sight, yet still not expecting it. That I had been hoping that the medical trial he had unexpectedly been accepted on would give us hope of a new life.

  It's the final unwelcome event.

  There is no attempt at revival as we have already spoken of this. Diarmuid does not want to die embraced in cords and tubes and science. The morning is surreal with the local doctor, the coroner and the neighbours making what should be the most solemn and heart-rending occasion into an everyday exercise in paperwork and politely worded condolences.

  Em still needs her breakfast. She wants toast and not weetabix. Mam cannot come over without Daniel and I cannot stand to have him here right now. Asking uncomfortable questions in his loud flat voice. My friends have disappeared in the last few years, through neglect and distance.

  Em is only two, she doesn't understand about her Da. She is more confused about why I am losing my mind than where he has gone to.

  I am sitting on the back porch. Inside is too real, too much of Diarmuid. The front p
orch is too exposed. The day seems too beautiful to be wasting on death. One of those three days a year in Ireland where it is warm and sunny and the sky is perfect in every way. Em wants to go to the park but I'm worried about what the neighbours will think. I'm wondering if I should mow the lawn and trim back the hedges before the funeral.

  I'm wishing I had a cigarette and a glass of wine. That Diarmuid was here to share them with me. That he was still dying inside the house so that I had a reason to go on.

  A low throaty rumble of a luxury car distracts me from the tears that are pricking my eyes painfully, so sharp I think my tears will be bloody.

  Razors slicing into my throat.

  The car stops, either at my house or the next one. A door shuts gently, a puff of air and I peer over the fence, curious despite the death of my husband or maybe I am in shock. An Aston Martin Vanquish, gun metal grey, is in my drive. A premonition passing through my mind, a whisper, because no one in the village drives a car like that.