Semi-Sweet

by Roisin Meaney

  “I thought Nora was coming.”

  “She’s in the loo,” he told her. “She’s given up the job,” he added.

  Hannah didn’t show the surprise he’d been expecting. “Right.”

  “She’s thinking of going back to the U.S.”

  Hannah’s wine arrived. She swirled the glass but didn’t drink.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  She looked at him. “They had a baby,” she said bleakly. “I only discovered it today. I was looking through an old paper.”

  “Who had a baby?”

  “Patrick and Leah. They had a boy. Patrick’s a dad. I thought I wouldn’t care, but…” She trailed off, her finger running around the rim of her glass. “Pathetic,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  Adam searched for the right response. “I suppose—”

  “Hey, nice top,” Nora said, reappearing suddenly.

  And that was the end of that.

  It was the last thing she wanted, to sit in a crowded wine bar with her social face on, but some instinct had forced her to stick to the plan. She’d packed her clean clothes and her toothbrush and the various other bits that traveled with her to John’s house. She’d washed her hair, she’d dressed in her favorite pink top and the gray pants that she always felt good in, she’d made up her face and sprayed on perfume.

  She’d told herself to stop being so stupid. She’d gone to Vintage, determined to shake off the bleakness that had descended since she’d read the news, since she’d turned a page idly in the week-old paper and seen it there in black and white: Reuben William. She’d resolved to put the whole thing out of her mind.

  And in the first minute of talking with Adam, she’d blurted it out.

  “You’re miles away,” John said later. Much later, when they were lying on his bed, his arm across her stomach, the Saturday-night traffic rumbling along the street three floors below.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really…” She ran a bare foot along his calf. “I just heard something this week that…threw me a bit, that’s all.”

  His fingers beat a soft tattoo on her abdomen. “I thought there was something up.”

  “Sorry,” she repeated.

  “No.” She saw him shake his head in the dim light that filtered through the unlined curtains. “Don’t apologize. And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  A long silence ensued. His hand moved lightly across her skin. She heard his calm breathing beside her. A siren sounded somewhere, rising and falling as it traveled through the streets. The silence afterward seemed deeper.

  “A baby,” she said. “My ex had a baby—or at least, his…” She couldn’t finish, feeling the grief rise in her. “Sorry,” she whispered, turning away from him, completely unable to stop the tears from pouring out.

  “It’s okay,” he said in the morning, when the hour hand of her watch had crawled, finally, to nine, and she could get up. “I understand,” he told her, putting out cereal and bread that she knew she wasn’t going to eat. “It’s too soon,” he said, in his boxers and T-shirt, with his unshaven chin and resigned smile. “You need more time. You said that at the start. I should have listened.”

  She wished he wasn’t so understanding. She wanted him to be less reasonable, needed him to get angry with her, or at least impatient, so she could feel justified in leaving him. She wanted a reason to let him go, but he gave her none.

  She stopped herself from saying, It’s not you, it’s me, even though it was true. It was her: She was being irrational and emotional and absolutely unfair to him. They’d barely started, and here she was ending it—and for what? For the idea of a baby that would never happen now, for a might-have-been scenario that existed only in her head? Ridiculous.

  He didn’t offer to walk her downstairs. He made no attempt to kiss her good-bye. He lifted a hand as she walked to the door, smiled, and told her to take care.

  The taxi she hailed on the street was driven by a man she didn’t recognize, who didn’t try to talk to her as he drove through the empty Sunday-morning streets. He charged her six euro and she gave him seven. She let herself into the house quietly, in case Adam was still asleep.

  She made tea and brought the pot upstairs to her room. She undressed and brushed her teeth and got into bed, feeling the weariness of a wakeful night overtaking her. She drank half a cup of tea before lying back and closing her eyes.

  Two breakups in six months. She yawned, pulling the duvet to her chin. Here we go again. At least this time there was no heartache, just the sad realization that she’d made a mistake, that she hadn’t, after all, found the one.

  July

  Almost half an hour into his seventh music lesson, Adam O’Connor’s patience finally ran out. He stopped attempting to play “Five Note Fun” and lowered his clarinet. Vivienne, who’d been pointing at the notes on the sheet music, turned her head toward him, her hand still raised.

  “Look,” Adam said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”

  She frowned. “You’re doing all right,” she said.

  “No,” Adam answered, laying the clarinet across his lap. “I’m not doing all right. I’m here under false pretenses.”

  Vivienne lowered her hand slowly, the color rising, as always, in her face.

  “I never wanted music lessons,” Adam said, beginning to twist apart the pieces of his clarinet. “I just wanted to get to know you. You’ve probably guessed that by now.”

  Her face was aflame, her gaze dropping to somewhere past his left knee.

  He slotted the clarinet pieces into the case. “I saw you in Vintage,” he said, “and I thought you looked interesting. I didn’t know anything about you, I had no idea if you were single or not, but there was just something about you…I wanted to meet you and talk to you, see what you were like. So when I heard that you gave music lessons, I bought a clarinet. On eBay.”

  Vivienne’s neck was pink with white blotches. He could see her throat muscles contracting as she swallowed. He refused to be put off. He hadn’t rehearsed what to say, he hadn’t planned any of this.

  “I bought the clarinet because of you,” he said. “It took me ages to put it together when it came—I almost broke it. I’d never considered learning to play any musical instrument before.” He smiled briefly as he closed the clarinet case. “Believe me, I know how daft all this sounds, particularly as I’m not the slightest bit musical—which you have of course realized by now.”

  Vivienne’s hands fluttered, a faint gesture of denial. Her mouth opened and closed again. He wondered how much longer he had before she fled from the room.

  “You intrigue me,” he said, nothing left to lose now. “I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re different—and I suspect you’re very sweet. I think about you a lot. I just wanted to get to know you, but you won’t let me.” He took his jacket from the back of the chair. “I think you’re scared of me, but there’s no reason to be. I’m not at all scary—ask any of my friends. I’m ordinary and flawed, just like everyone else.”

  He got to his feet then, holding the jacket and case. Vivienne didn’t move.

  “Thank you for the lessons,” Adam said. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time. Don’t get up. I know the way out. Oh, and—” He pulled his wallet from the pocket of his jacket, took out a twenty-euro note, and laid it on the closed piano lid next to the cat, who sniffed at it.

  On impulse, Adam slid a business card from his wallet and placed it on top of the money. Something to remember him by, even if it ended up in her bin. Vivienne still didn’t move, didn’t look in his direction.

  “Thank you,” Adam said again. “I’ll see myself out. Good-bye.”

  He opened the door and stood back to let in Mrs. O’Toole, with her tray of milk and Mikado biscuits, and her astonished expression.

  “I know about Nora,” Leah said to him at last. Their two-week-old son was cradled in her arms, his tiny, pink,
sucking mouth fixed on her left nipple.

  “Hmm?” Patrick turned a page in his book.

  “I know about Nora,” Leah repeated in the same calm voice, watching him over the curve of Reuben’s head. Reuben, firstborn son of Jacob and Leah, she’d discovered completely by chance on the Internet, and it had seemed too coincidental to ignore.

  Patrick looked up. “Nora? What about her?”

  Leah watched his innocent face, felt the surprisingly strong tug of her son’s mouth.

  “What about Nora?” Patrick repeated. “What are you referring to?”

  “Patrick,” she said calmly, “you know what I’m referring to. I know about you and Nora.”

  “Leah, I have no idea what you mean.” He frowned, closing his book, leaving a finger trapped inside. “I honestly don’t know what you’re—”

  “I want you to leave,” she cut in quietly, stroking her son’s downy head.

  “What?” His incredulous expression, all injured innocence. “What the hell do you think happ—”

  “Shh,” she said. “You’ll upset Reuben.”

  Patrick laid the book on the coffee table. “Leah,” he said quietly, “you’ve got it all wrong. Nothing happened between me and Nora, I swear—”

  “Don’t,” she said, a new note entering her voice. “Please don’t treat me as if I’m stupid.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You slept with her,” she said, “probably more than once. You were with her the day Reuben was born.”

  “Leah—”

  “Lower your voice,” she said, easing Reuben gently from her breast, lifting him to rest sleepily on her shoulder, rubbing his back in circles. “You had an affair, just like you had an affair with me.”

  And if, right up to this moment, there had existed within her the most infinitesimal scrap of doubt—despite Nora’s abrupt departure from the Clongarvin Voice, despite her not having come near Leah since Reuben’s birth—if some part of her still refused to accept that it was true, still longed for him to be innocent of any infidelity, she realized at last, as he stood and walked from the room, the splayed book forgotten, that it was all too true indeed.

  The decision, when John finally made it, brought relief, and a feeling that it was the right thing to do. Despite his efforts, he’d never really settled in Ireland. The work had been slow in coming, the money never quite enough for him to feel relaxed. He missed the sea, and the familiarity of home, and, of course, Danielle—most of all Danielle.

  He felt bad about letting down Wally and the band. Wally had been good to him. I hope you understand, he’d said, and Wally had assured him—a little too enthusiastically, maybe—that they’d find another saxophonist. You do what you have to do, Wally had said. Good luck, man. Sorry it didn’t work out.

  Patsy in the woodworking store had presented him with a Guinness pin and told him to be sure to keep in touch. All the best, now, she’d said. We’re sorry to lose you.

  He closed his Irish bank account after his last check cleared. He bought a one-way ferry ticket from Larne to Stranraer. He packed his battered van with his tools and his saxophone and his music collection and his clothes. He handed back the keys to his apartment and to the little workshop. His deposits were returned to him.

  He drove through Clongarvin for the last time. He passed a yellow-painted shop with CUPCAKES ON THE CORNER painted in curly blue lettering over the door. In the van he was too high up to see anyone inside, to make out whoever stood behind the counter.

  He drove on.

  “Where do you keep the cotton buds?” Fiona asked.

  “Look how he puts his hand under his cheek,” she murmured to Leah as they bent over Reuben’s cot. “You used to sleep like that.” She tucked his small bare foot under the blanket.

  “His grasp is so strong,” she said when her grandchild’s tiny fingers closed around her thumb. “You forget that, how strong their grasp is.” She smiled with real affection at him.

  “Should I wash his hair?” She lowered him carefully into the warm water at bath time as Leah looked on.

  “He has long fingers,” she said, watching as Leah toweled his hands dry afterward. “He’ll be musical, or artistic.” The talc in her hand, waiting to sprinkle it over him.

  “Will I put this on him, or should he go straight into pajamas?” Holding up a yellow T-shirt for Leah’s approval.

  And if the phone rang: “You answer that. It’s probably a customer. Give Reuben to me.” Putting out her arms as Leah got to her feet.

  And not once, not a single time in the week since Patrick had left, did Leah’s mother say, I told you so.

  For now, that was more than enough.

  “But she must have said something, she must have made some kind of response.”

  Adam forked beans onto his toast. “Not a word. She just sat there looking at the floor. Her mother was struck dumb, too, when she saw me leaving halfway through. I nearly collided with her on my way out. Nearly sent the milk and biscuits flying.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said, “but at least you tried. Better to have tried and lost.”

  “Actually,” Adam said, “I think it’s ‘Better to have loved and lost.’”

  “Is it?” She laid her fork down and mopped tomato sauce with the end of her toast. “What are we like? We’re a right pair. Consoling each other over beans on toast.”

  “Maybe your mother was right, maybe we should get together. Doesn’t look like we’re going to end up with anyone else, does it?”

  “Not really.” Hannah considered. “Maybe that can be our last resort, when we’re about sixty.”

  Adam groaned. “Do I have to keep looking till then?”

  “I’m afraid so. What about Nora? When’s she leaving?”

  “End of the week. Her flight goes from Dublin on Saturday morning, so she’s getting a train up on Friday.”

  “Will you drive her to the station?”

  “I can’t—I’m meeting a new client in Athlone. Nora’s not bothered. She’ll get a taxi.”

  “And what about the ad?”

  “It’s going into tomorrow’s paper.”

  He was staying on in Hannah’s house and getting a new housemate for his flat. They’d decided it made more sense that way.

  Hannah was thirty-three, Adam almost thirty-two. Most people their age were married, or at least in some kind of committed relationship. In all his dating life, Adam had never come close to committing, and now it looked like his fixation on Vivienne was a thing of the past, too.

  Hannah had just left a man who was kind and intelligent, who turned up when he said he would, and treated her right. What was wrong with them?

  “I told Mam about splitting up with John,” she said.

  “And?”

  “She was exactly as I expected her to be.” She brought their plates to the sink and ran water. “She said I hadn’t given him a chance, that I was much too fussy, that I wasn’t getting any younger, and how many more men did I think were going to come along? The usual.”

  “Well, maybe she has a point. Maybe you didn’t give him a chance.”

  Had she given up on John too soon? Could something have developed between them if she hadn’t been so hasty? Too late now—she’d never know. “He’s gone back to Scotland,” she told Adam. “I heard yesterday.”

  She’d met Wally as she was rounding a bend in the supermarket, struggling to control the wheels of her cart.

  Steady on, there, he’d said. You’re not in the fairground now. He held a basket. She saw Rice Krispies, frozen pizza, and frozen chips.

  They’d chatted briefly. She’d laughed at his choice of cereal. He’d promised not to spread the word that she was buying six bottles of wine; she’d protested it was only to get the bulk discount with a coupon she had.

  And then he’d said, I assume you know Johnny’s moved back home, and Hannah’s smile had faded, and he’d said quickly, Sorry, me and my big mouth, and she’d said, No, no, it’s fine, but th
e mood had changed, and he’d said, Well, I’ll let you get off, and moved away, and Hannah had added toothpaste and macaroni and olives to her cart, and they hadn’t come face-to-face again.

  The trouble was, it was fine. She couldn’t honestly say she missed John, now that he was gone. She regretted its not working out between them, of course—but the fact remained that she was fine without him. She missed him a little, like you’d miss the company of anyone you got on well with, but that was it.

  “What’ll you do with the clarinet?” she asked Adam.

  “Sell it,” he answered. “I’ll put an ad on eBay. Easy come, easy go. Might even make a few bob.” He opened the sitting-room door and whistled at Kirby. “Come on, you fat lump—time for a walk.”

  Left alone, Hannah dried the dishes and set out her ingredients as usual. Was this it from now on? Would she and Adam still be sitting down to dinner together in twenty years’ time, with the rest of Clongarvin assuming they were living happily ever after? Would her joke about marrying each other when they were sixty turn out to be horribly prescient?

  Would she meet Patrick on the street every so often, surrounded by his family, and pretend that her life was just as full?

  She sighed and made her way upstairs to bed.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” Geraldine said, barely in the door, her jacket still on.

  Stephen lowered the volume on the Late Late. “What’s that?”

  “Patrick Dunne and Leah Bradshaw have split up.” She picked up the poker. “Can you credit it, and that little baby hardly arrived?”

  Stephen raised his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. “You don’t say.”

  “And what’s more, I got it from Fiona Bradshaw herself,” Geraldine added, thrusting the poker into the center of the glowing briquettes, collapsing Stephen’s hastily constructed pyramid, ten minutes earlier. “She told me in person, made a point of it.”