Rain Falls on Everyone

by Rain Falls on Everyone (retail) (epub)

  Her father hardly said a word but his questions hung unspoken in the space between them. She told him she’d call when Fergal was out of surgery. His only comment came then.

  “That young African friend of yours better hope he makes it. There’ll be no mercy if a white father-of-three dies after being shot by a black. Not in this place.”

  The blackouts, or brownouts, or whatever you’d call the crumbling of her brain, stopped at some point during the hours of waiting. It was as if the sheer boredom stifled her panic, dulling her brain back to its normal rhythm. The doctor, an austerely pretty woman who looked like she hadn’t slept enough since med school, came and said Fergal’s liver had been damaged and there was a build-up of acid in his stomach that had to be treated. They’d know more in a few hours. She asked Deirdre to stay because the Gardaí wanted to speak to her. Deirdre nodded and the doctor left, padding off to become an always-shadowy bit player in some other personal drama that would mark her forever. Deirdre had seen and done it all before – she knew that reassuring smile too well and the sympathetic listening look you wheeled out for the questions that really couldn’t be answered – but now the brutality of being on the other side took her breath away.

  As she waited, she silently recited what she knew. Theo had shot Fergal but Fergal had pulled the gun. Neville had killed himself. Theo had gone to her dad’s, maybe. Fergal had tortured Neville, maybe. If Fergal survived, she would never let him back into the house. No ifs, buts or maybes. That question at least was answered. But the bigger one – did she want him to survive? – that question was still out there.

  Some time later, two guards came to see her. They didn’t look much older than Grace and they towered awkwardly before her as if waiting for her to take the lead. A nurse found them a little office to talk in. Deirdre told them what’d happened, leaving out all the stuff about Neville and Gerrity and drugs. It didn’t take long and it didn’t make much sense but she was too tired to care, and she could tell they weren’t too bothered either by the whys and wherefores of a brawl on a shabby estate. She said she thought Theo must’ve worked with her husband but she wasn’t sure. She said what’d happened was an accident and that she, for sure, didn’t want to press charges. She couldn’t speak for her husband but she didn’t think he would either. She didn’t know where the gun had come from. She didn’t think her husband had one but she might not have known. She’d no clue where Theo had gone. She didn’t know his last name and this much was true because she couldn’t for the life of her remember it. The two young lads didn’t even try to hide the knowing looks they tossed between them. She’d clocked them staring at her grazed hands. She hated being all they expected.

  “It was nothing more than a scuffle,” she said wearily. “It just got out of hand.”

  Never had a truer word been spoken, she thought, as she watched the Gardaí leave the room, boredom, disinterest and a kind of pitying scorn coming off their jackets like steam. They were as glad to go as she was to see them off. She doubted there’d be much follow-up, though they said they’d be back to have a chat with Fergal when he was able to talk.

  Afterwards, she called Pauline, who said the kids were fine and not to worry. She’d stay until Deirdre got home, whenever that was.

  “But, Grace? How’s Grace, Pauline? Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s been in her room since last night. She won’t let me in, Dee. I don’t think she’ll come to the phone. Leave her be. She’s had a lot to deal with and sometimes it’s better to be alone. We know that. She’s a big girl, she’ll get through this in her own way. Just stay there and worry about Fergal. I’ve got it here.”

  So Deirdre wandered the corridors, bought coffees in a shop where get-well cards were stacked beside mass cards and sank into the no-hours rhythm of this halfway house for life. When the doctor, paler now, her lines more pronounced, finally came to tell her that Fergal would make it, she just nodded. She no longer had the energy for relief. Unsure if she even felt it. Somewhere, in a dank basement beneath her consciousness, a version of herself had been weighing how she would live without him, how long it would take the children to recover, what she would say to them, how she would make widowhood work. The doctor pushed a strand of hair from her face, her eyes fixed on Deirdre’s. Deirdre knew she was not playing her part, the doctor knew it too, but in the over-bright corridor where nothing could be hidden, the two exhausted women folded this knowledge neatly and put it away. What good would come of shaking it out? The dust would only blind everyone.

  Fergal was still groggy when they finally let her see him. From the neck up, he looked no worse than he did after a heavy night out. She tried to concentrate as the doctor talked to her about dressings and exercises and time off work, but the words were like flies buzzing around her head, never settling. She fixed her eyes on Fergal’s face, looking for a sign that he’d changed, that this crazy night had somehow reordered him too. He looked like he was sleeping. The doctor finally left her, pointedly pulling the chair closer to the bed on her way out. Deirdre squeaked it back to its original spot. She wasn’t going to weep at her man’s bedside for the trouble he’d got himself into. So she sat and just looked until Fergal’s eyelids flickered and he was back. She felt the air leave her body.

  “Dee, oh thank Christ.”

  His eyes filled with tears and he reached his hand across the loose-knit bedspread towards her. Deirdre didn’t move. This is our rock bottom, she thought. This is where it ends. And just as she had let the wallpaper go, and the coat stand, she breathed slowly and got ready to let Fergal go.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, standing up. She wobbled but steadied herself against the chair. He still had his hand out. He thought she was coming to him.

  “I’m glad you’re not dead because that would make the kids sad and I don’t want to break their hearts, Fergal. But I think that might be the only reason I’m glad and isn’t that a terrible thing? I’ve been watching you, wondering what I’d feel when you woke, and then you opened your eyes, and do you know what I felt? Empty. You’ve been stretching me like elastic for years now, pulling me back and forth, making me love you, and hate you, and wish you dead, and wish you’d buy me flowers. But I’m not doing that any more, Fergal. We’re done.”

  She started for the door. She was determined to go but even so, she knew there was just the tiniest breath of a chance hovering over the five steps between the chair and the door. She wanted to be strong, she needed to be strong, but her eyes couldn’t leave him yet. He dropped his hand to the bedspread and his eyes, bleary and bloodshot, locked on hers. He was trying to piece together his own jigsaw. What had taken her hours, he was trying to do in the time it takes to walk five steps. The sand ran out and he fell back on his anger.

  “Fair enough. Then fuck off. Ye nearly got me killed, you bitch. You and your monkey boyfriend. What’s that all about then? Cradle-snatcher now, are ye?”

  The words punched holes in Deirdre, making her gasp. But what stopped her in her tracks were the tears running down Fergal’s face.

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and pulled up one of the clearest images from the night before: Grace, Conor, Kevin and Pauline standing on the doorstep, pale faces blue-rinsed by the spinning lights of the ambulance. Grace had wrapped her arms around Kevin and there were tears running down his cheeks. Deirdre thought he was sobbing but she couldn’t be sure from where she was sitting in the back of the ambulance. In any case, she couldn’t take him in her arms to soothe the sobs out. She had sworn then that this would be the last time her husband would tear her into strips. No more.

  She took a last look, taking the time to recognise Fergal’s need, to remember everything he was and was not, and then deliberately stepped away.

  “I’ve tried, Fergal. God and all the angels know I’ve tried. I’ve made excuses for you, I’ve loved you even after you hit me. I stayed because I still thought we might be able to fix things so that we could make the life we’d promise
d each other. But enough is enough. I don’t trust you now and I am too tired to start trying to get to know you again. I’ll call your mam. She’ll take care of you. Don’t come home when they let you out. I won’t let you in. And Grace may very well kill you.”

  The fatigue hit her as soon as she stepped out of the hospital into a light so bright it skewered her eyes and her head. Everything looked too fresh, too obvious. People were heading back to work after lunch but the jester sun and the playful, light breeze held them back, slowing their footsteps so that they seemed to glide like pastel-coloured swans. A heady bouquet of ice-cream, suntan lotion and lunchtime wine perfumed the air.

  Deirdre texted Pauline to say she was on her way but then decided to walk to Blessington Park before catching the bus. She needed the air. God knows where she’d end up if she got onto a bus in the state she was in. She called her dad to tell him Fergal was alright but there was no answer. He must be out. I wonder what he does all day? She’d never really given this much thought, content with the certitude that he would be there after the news at nine whenever she made her semi-regular phone call. Wasn’t it mad how one day people could be your all and then you ended up being fine with not knowing what they were up to at any given moment? How long until she didn’t care what Fergal was doing? She wondered where Theo was. She’d tried to ring him a few times but his phone must be off, or dead. She’d no idea how he would get to her father’s place, but there were buses, and you could still thumb a lift in some places. Mind you, might not be that easy for a six-foot-plus black guy. She didn’t know. She’d never asked him about that side of his life, the reality of being black here. She supposed she thought it’d be embarrassing, for both of them, but maybe she should’ve tried.

  Maybe that’s the thing that makes this life so hard, she thought. Maybe they should teach that at school – looking and living through other people’s eyes. It’d be more use than the bloody Venn diagrams that nearly drove Grace to distraction these past weeks.

  She was in the park now and she quickened her step. It was cool under the trees at the edge of the reservoir. She passed a young mother, pushing a toddler in a buggy. The woman had a coffee on the go and bags under her eyes. She looked exhausted. A mallard waddled through the fence onto the path and the mother stopped and crouched down beside her son, pointing and smiling.

  “Look, it’s a duck, Brendan. A duck. Yeah, that’s right. Quack, quack. That’s the sound ducks make.”

  Deirdre felt tears well in her eyes as she drew near the woman. It was the goddamn simple beauty and ticking tragedy of it all. Love and hope and laughter, the promise of a future, and all these things already being in Deirdre’s past. But these are the only things we really need, she thought. Nothing really: a duck on a path in a sunny park.

  “Are ye alright, there?”

  It was the young woman. Ah God, I’ve been talking out loud again, Deirdre thought before she realised that she’d tears running down her cheeks. There was a tightness in her throat that was making it hard to breathe. The little boy was still saying, “Duck, duck” but in a flat voice, like he knew the fun was over for now. He stared impassively at Deirdre, as though he knew too that it was her fault.

  “Yeah, I’m grand, not a bother. Thanks for asking.”

  Deirdre hurried past, wiping her face with a tissue.

  When she got home, Pauline called to her from the kitchen. Deirdre stepped around the stain on the carpet in the hall and sat at the table in front of her friend. Pauline poured her a cup of tea. They didn’t say much. They’d both learned that sometimes there was just too much to say. Pauline told her that the kids were were okay, shocked but okay. They were glad their dad was going to be alright but they hadn’t slept well and were all in their rooms now, kipping.

  “Are ye taking him back?”

  “No.”

  Pauline gave her a hug then, pulling Deirdre into her chest so that she could finally let go. When Deirdre had cried herself dry, she went to talk to Grace but her daughter wouldn’t open the door of her room. She could hear her crying and she couldn’t stop herself from kissing her hands and placing them on the door as if she could send her love through the wood.

  “Darling, just let me talk to you,” she begged, over and over.

  The door stayed closed.

  Later, Kevin stumbled down the stairs. Deirdre clung to him, stroking his sweaty hair, kissing his head, spilling all her love and fear onto the one child who would still bear it.

  “Dad’s going to be fine now but he’ll have to stay in hospital for a while, and then… then we’ll see.”

  It seemed to be enough. Or maybe Kevin already knew that was all she could offer and that’s why he didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe he was already old enough to see her limitations. Conor came down a little while later. She gave him the same speech. He shrugged his shoulders and poured more cereal into his bowl. But his eyes were glazed and his lips trembled.

  Deirdre sent the boys off to their friends and then she and Pauline scrubbed Fergal’s blood out of the carpet. Neither said a word so that the dull scrape of the wire brushes on the carpet was the only sound in the whole house and maybe in the whole world.

  Afterwards, Deirdre told Pauline to go home. She laughed.

  “Why would I go home, Dee? There’s nothing for me there.”

  She set Deirdre up on the sofa, tucked a blanket around her and ordered her to sleep.

  Later, the doorbell rang, dragging Deirdre from a dream-free doze. She listened. It wasn’t the police.

  The sitting-room door creaked open.

  “Sorry Dee. I wasn’t sure if you were awake. It’s Neville’s mother.”

  Pauline’s head disappeared and a small woman with huge eyes in a face drained of colour came in and walked slowly over to the sofa.

  “Hello, I’m Lisa Mulholland.”

  She held out her hand. Deirdre stood and shook it.

  “I’m so sorry for your troubles, Mrs Mulholland…”

  There was no way to go forward so Deirdre stopped. Lisa nodded and dropped her head.

  “I’ll get us all some tea,” said Pauline, disappearing into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call before,” Lisa said. “I suddenly remembered that I should tell Grace about… what happened and then I just walked out the door to come here. I didn’t even think of calling. I don’t know why. I knew where you lived and I came. I needed the air, I suppose.”

  Deirdre looked at the small woman standing in front of her. All our dead leave these shadows walking the earth, she thought.

  “Is… Is Grace okay?” Lisa asked.

  There was no answer to her question or at least not one that Deirdre could give, so she just let it be.

  “You must be exhausted,” she said. “Such a dreadful thing. I just can’t imagine.”

  Lisa sat down, pulling her beige trench coat together over her knees. She was wearing crumpled black trousers and trainers and there was something forlorn about the outfit. Deirdre felt as though she would never have worn it before Neville died.

  “It’s like the clocks have stopped,” Lisa said. “When the police knocked at the door, when I saw them through the glass, the clocks stopped for me. I don’t think they’ll ever start ticking again.”

  She looked at Deirdre but this was another one of those statements that had no reply.

  Pauline came in with the tea, handing out the cups and then sitting in a chair near the window as though she could sense Deirdre would not be able to handle this sorrow on her own.

  “I knew, in that moment, I knew that he was dead. It’s not that I was expecting it. He’d said he was going to London with his friends, that’s what he said. But I think I always knew, in some part of me, that he was not telling the whole truth about that. You always know when they’re lying, don’t you? But we can’t call them out on everything, can we?”

  She looked at them both, her head swinging left and right, her eyes beseeching them for the fragments o
f absolution she would spend the rest of her life seeking.

  “To be honest, I thought maybe he’d gone to Spain, or even Morocco. I don’t know. Somewhere he could get high to escape from it all. I knew Neville, you see. I think he thought I didn’t but I did. It made me sad that he didn’t get it. I wanted so much for him, but still, I did know him as he was. And I still loved him. I just don’t know why he couldn’t see that. Why he didn’t know that it made no difference.”

  “Pauline says we only see what we know we can bear,” Deirdre said, nodding at her friend. “Maybe Neville didn’t want to see himself as you really saw him. Maybe he needed to think that you saw him differently. Maybe that was something he needed to lean on. I don’t know.”

  Lisa sipped her tea. Her hands were shaking.

  “I thought after what happened to his hand, he might change. I hoped that’s why he was taking a trip, to sort of mark an end to all that. I wanted to believe it.”

  She looked straight at Deirdre now.

  “I feel like everything we’ve done has meant nothing. Our whole lives, every minute where we thought there was reason and hope and a future, it was never true. We were always travelling to this place. None of the rest was real. I see that now. This was the only reality, waiting for us every moment of every day. And the worst thing is, I don’t think there was ever anything any of us could’ve done to change it.”

  The sunlight came softly through the window as if it too knew it must tread gently in this room. It must be late afternoon, Deirdre thought. Everything was quiet. Then the ice-cream van’s jingle exploded outside. They all jumped. They’d forgotten the world.

  As the noise died down, Lisa spoke again. “I found this letter in Neville’s room. It’s for Grace. I might’ve found it sooner, if I’d thought to look, but… It must’ve been on his pillow and then it slipped down, and I was lying there last night, and… Anyway, I found it and I wanted to give it to her.”

  She held out a plain white envelope. It had Grace written on the front in black biro. What could Deirdre do but take it? Was her girl strong enough for this? She remembered the first love letter some uppity lad had given Grace when she was just nine. Her little girl had bawled and made Deirdre take the letter away. She’d told her to burn it, she didn’t ever want to read it but it was still upstairs in a box, pencil love fading day by day.