by Laura Elliot
We left our twins at the airport last month. They never looked back. No last, lingering glances, their eyes eloquent with gratitude for eighteen years of nurturing and unconditional love. Instead, they looked ahead to their futures, unaware that their departure would snap the last fragile link holding their parent’s marriage together. I’ve poked at this truth, worried it like a dentist prodding a tooth nerve. I’ve waited for a reaction, the jerk of reality that signals pain. Nothing. Our marriage has a serene surface, a veneer that has taken us to the point where Jake seeks solitude in his music room rather than opening my door to say goodnight to me.
Ed Jaworski’s brutal decision has proved that a contract is not worth the paper it’s written on. Vows can be broken and the sky does not fall down. What I feel for Jake is affection and gratitude for the years we’ve shared. I remember what it was like in the beginning but that flame has cooled into ash. Only an odd spark reminds us of what we’ve lost… and how it all began.
I danced with Jenny, handbags at our feet, short skirts swirling over leggings, stonewashed denim jackets. We were seventeen years of age and dizzy with the wonder of it. The mirror ball spun a kaleidoscope of colour across our upturned faces. Moonflowers exploded, strobes pulsated, and I danced harder, my eyes swallowing the sight of him. His black hair streaked with blond, skin-tight jeans, leather vest — rangy and sexy and ready. Two years since we’d met in Monsheelagh but all that was behind me and I was living in the thrilling, exhilarating now of a new beginning.
Alone at last, away from the sweat and the noise and the crush of heaving bodies, he unhooked my bra. My body glowed with a hot, shivery excitement, as dangerous as it was demanding. His tongue caressed my nipples, strummed my pleasure, darts of fire low in my stomach. He’d borrowed his mother’s car for the night. We laughed over the First Affiliation posters in the back seat. Something about a Divorce Referendum. Eleanor’s smiling mouth and watchful eyes staring at us. We shoved the posters to the floor and came together again. My legs trembled, opened under the pressure of his hand, his slow deliberate journey between my thighs, delicately stroking upwards and he, sensing my nervousness, waited until I relaxed and the smear of desire glistened his fingers.
Fate was waiting in the wings, sly smiling, as I pulled down his jeans, touched him, held him, guided him in. We were meant to be together, one flesh, one beat. Our future was shaping but the present was all that mattered as we lay there, pressed limb to limb, mouth to mouth, ready to be engulfed, engorged, ravished. How was it that such a moment would so easily be forgotten in the dread that followed?
My mother was the first to guess. Dismay in Sara’s eyes as she stood outside the bathroom door listening to the retching sounds from within. Morning sickness in all its misery consumed me for the first three months. I emerged eventually, goose pimples on my skin, eyes streaming, and stood facing her in my school uniform, unable any longer to hide the truth.
I met Jake’s mother for the first time and was terrified by this impeccably groomed woman, who summed me up in a glance as ‘trouble’ then set about resolving the problem as swiftly as possible. Her contacts were excellent in the mother and baby home where I’d stay throughout my ‘crisis pregnancy.’ Every time Eleanor said ‘crisis pregnancy’, and she said it often, I felt like a statistic to be shunted out of sight, out of mind. Everyone agreed that we were too young to be parents. Jake was nineteen and I would have just turned eighteen when our baby was born.
Sara remained implacably opposed to adoption but my father, not being a man to disguise his feelings, was on Eleanor’s side. My untimely pregnancy was interfering with his Big Plan, as he called it. My parent’s house was sold and we were moving to Australia. I’d argued, wept and fiercely resisted this decision but Eighties Ireland was in recession and Eoin was determined to make a new beginning.
In the weeks that followed there were meetings, discussions, angry scenes and decisions made. Jake and I were in the eye of the storm, right at its heart where we belonged, but no one was listening to us.
My parents were arguing when we entered the house one night, unaware that we could overhear every bitter word.
‘I’m not letting her hold us back.’ Eoin’s voice was flinty with determination. ‘She was careless enough to get herself knocked up by some guy she hardly knew and now we’re supposed to deal with the consequences.’
‘She’s our only child, Eoin.’ Sara sounded distraught. ‘We need to be here to support her. Otherwise, she’ll be bullied by that dreadful woman and our grandchild will be adopted.’
‘Adoption is the best solution,’ my father shouted. ‘At this stage in my life, I’m not prepared to cope with a baby. And neither are you. As for Nadine, what does she know about parenting? Zilch, that’s what!’
I heard the snap of his fingers, a pistol shot in the immediate silence that followed this statement.
‘But that’s why she needs our support.’ Sara’s anger spilled over into sobs. ‘I want to be with her when her baby is born.’
‘Where are you supposed to live? Our house is sold. In six week’s time we’re supposed to be flying to Australia. Nadine comes with us. I’m not delaying our departure date.’
‘She wants to be with Jake. This is also his child.’
‘And he’ll walk out on her the first chance he gets. If she won’t have the baby adopted and she won’t come with us then she can make her own bed and lie in it. You and I go together as planned or I go alone. Make up your mind, Sara. We’ve come too far to allow this mess to change our plans.’
Unable to listen any longer, I gripped Jake’s hand. We left the house as silently as we’d entered it.
This argument changed everything. It strengthened our resolve. Instead of seeing a problem that needed a solution we were able to visualise a baby. Our baby. We became fiercely protective of this life we’d so wantonly created. This gave us the courage to stand up to Eleanor. No adoption. She insisted on a quiet, swift wedding. Ali moved in my womb as I exchanged wedding vows with Jake, a butterfly patter, almost imagined. New life kicking into action while my old life disappeared.
A week later my father left for Australia where a job in construction was waiting for him. Sara would stay with me until her first grandchild was born. Gentle Rosanna took care of us all in Sea Aster. Ali was two months old when I embraced my mother for the last time. The farewell at the airport. The sense of unreality as I watched her disappear through the departure gates. I waved goodbye and held Ali high in my arms for her to see. Then she was gone, heading towards a new life that was extinguished eighteen months later when she was killed in a road accident.
I flew with Jake to Australia, travelled through day and night when I received that shattering phone call from my father. Sara was on life support. Dark bruises on her forehead and hands were the only external marks I could see but, internally, all was lost. Hearing, said the hospital chaplain, was the last sense to go. I’d time to whisper in her ear, caress her hands, kiss her repeatedly before Jake led me away.
‘She looks so peaceful,’ my father kept saying, as if this would give me some consolation. ‘She never knew what hit her.’
Jake held me upright when her life support was switched off. He supported me from her graveside and back home to our children. To the life we were slowly building together.
CHAPTER 6
JAKE
At first, Jake believed the seed Karin planted in his mind had fallen on barren soil. But it kept growing shoots. Fierce, demanding shoots that made him question why he had to rise at six in the morning to beat the rush hour traffic. Why the workload he brought home at weekends kept growing. Why so many people were breathing down his neck. His bank manager, who, in the heady days of easy borrowing, had insisted the boom times were here to stay but now looked askance when Jake mentioned a loan extension. The VAT officer who arrived without an appointment to inspect Tõnality’s VAT records and gave Jake a dead fish stare when he asked if everything was in order. Tõnality’s
biggest customer who had declared himself bankrupt and ended any hope of settling his account. If it wasn’t for Shard he would go crazy. Thanks to Karin Moylan, he now had an escape route.
He never intended losing touch with the band but after the twins were born and the lads were still talking about hangovers, garage raves and one-night stands, he could no longer pretend to have anything in common with them. Apart from Daryl Farrell who formed Shard with him when they were fourth-year students in St Fabian’s College, Jake had not seen the others for years.
Soon after his return from New York they met in a bar on Grafton Street to discuss the possibility of a Shard reunion. The old camaraderie was still there and they spent the night reminiscing about the past. Reedy, the bass guitarist, looked older than the others, a lived-in face with premature crevices. Too much touring and weed, he confided to Jake. Hart, who used to stumble drunk on stage and play his rhythm guitar flawlessly, was now the owner of a yoga centre called Hartland to Health. Something to do with shoulder stands and a third eye. It all sounded very mysterious to Jake who, was astonished to see Hart drinking soda water with a slice of lemon instead of knocking back shots of tequila. Daryl, Shard’s one-time lead guitarist, had recently become a first-time father. He spoke about breastfeeding with the confidence of a wet nurse and swiped his finger over his iPhone to show them photographs of his baby daughter crying, smiling, kicking her legs in the air. He made Jake feel old, his role as a parent just beginning whereas any one of Jake’s four adult children were capable of turning him into a grandfather. Barry, the drummer, once known as Bad Boy Barry Balfe, had made a fortune laying bricks during the boom. Unemployed since the collapse of the construction industry, he was examining his options. The reunion gig was manna from heaven.
They would perform the songs that made them famous and introduce Jake’s newer songs, dust them off and bring them to life. Reedy claimed they would need a boot camp to kick them into shape if they were to appear in public again and they now rehearsed three nights a week in the basement of a recording studio. Now, two months in, they had formed into a tight, cohesive unit. The rehearsals were chaotic, argumentative and fun. Jake had forgotten what it was like to have fun. Forgotten what it was like to be the singer in a band.
Tonight, before he left for band practice, Nadine made a comment about fiddling while Rome burned. She said it tersely, pointedly. He hoped she would be in bed when he returned. Band practice had gone on longer than anticipated and he had wanted to spend an hour in his music room before calling it a night. Reedy, whose musical opinion he respected, liked ‘The Long Goodbye’ but believed the arrangement needed further development. He was walking towards his music room when he noticed a light under the door of Nadine’s home office. He had hesitated outside. He should go in and say goodnight, face her accusatory gaze, her acerbic comments. But the composition was inside his head, guitars strumming, drums drumming, a keyboard adding depth to the arrangement. He needed to pin it down before it evaporated under the harsh reality of talking about Tõnality, which was all he and Nadine ever did these days.
His phone bleeped when he was in his music room. A text from Karin with an attached photo. She was on a film set, sitting on the steps of a trailer while people in Regency costumes walked past her. Busy day on the set, she texted. How did band practice go?
He heard a door slam, Nadine’s footsteps on the stairs. He should have mentioned Karin as soon as he returned from New York. It would have been so easy when she picked him up at the airport. Guess who I met on the flight… an old friend… Karin Moylan sends her best. But he said nothing and now it was impossible to drop her name casually into their conversation. She was his secret and her importance was growing in proportion to the clandestine nature of their texts.
Her texts came every day, usually accompanied by whimsical photographs of New York, an opera she had attended, a flash concert in a shopping centre, skyscrapers lit at night on Fifth Avenue, an image of her jogging in Central Park, her skin glowing, her nipples straining against her sweat top. She never mentioned Nadine, nor did he. But what pithy, witty response could he text in return? Cash flow problems and an irate bank manager? The kiss of death, Jake reckoned. His own responses were equally bland and light-hearted.
New York was his coded word for her.
Is New York awake yet?
What’s happening in New York right now?
Raining here, pining for some New York sunshine.
Wish I was in New York and could stay there forever.
He had deleted that last text, its double entendre too blatant for anyone’s eyes but his own. She had become his buffer zone, his cloud nine, his fantasy against his daily grind of cancelled orders and lies about the cheque being in the post. He should buy a new phone with a secret number. The thought that he was becoming a cliché appalled him. Nadine would never check his phone and what harm if she did? The texts were harmless, mildly flirtatious and, like Shard, a welcome distraction from running his troubled company.
Nadine was in bed and awake when he lay down beside her. She was still annoyed with him. He could tell by her eyes. The chill factor.
‘Sorry I was so late getting back from band practice,’ he said.
‘I thought you might come into the office and acknowledge my existence.’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Analyse the meaning yourself.’ She turned away from him and pressed her face into the pillow. ‘It’s late and I’m tired. Goodnight.’
CHAPTER 7
NADINE
Smart Art’s is crowded tonight but Art has kept our usual table for us. Friday night is our wind down time, pizzas and beer on our way home from work. We made a rule when we started this weekly ritual that we would not discuss Tõnality. We keep to this decision, even though it’s uppermost in our minds. We talk about the children, although we both agree we must stop calling them ‘children.’ They’re adults, eligible to vote, eligible to marry, eligible to die for their country, if called upon to do so. But what do we call them instead? We give up on that one and talk about Ali’s disappointment when she didn’t receive a phone call after her last audition. I read out a text from Samantha informing us that Sam had beaten his personal best and we discuss Brian’s new pottery collection. It’s noisier than usual in the pizzeria. I ask Jake if we can break the taboo and discuss Tõnality. He sighs, shrugs.
‘If you must.’
A man at the next table starts singing ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. He’s too drunk to remember the words and Jake rubs his hand across the back of his neck.
‘This recession could ruin us.’ I raise my voice as Jake leans forward to hear me. ‘We should sell Tõnality while it’s still viable. Let’s take a look again at those offers we received last year and seriously consider the best one.’ I look away as his eyes widen, their greyness exaggerated by the flickering nightlight on the table.
‘What’s brought this on?’ His astonishment is not surprising. I’ve leaped in at the deep end without testing the shallows first but I feel reckless tonight.
‘Think of it, Jake. We sell the company to Paul Rowan or Susanna Cox. Both offers were good. Then we sell the house.’
‘Sell the house?’ His eyelids flicker. ‘How many beers have you had?’
‘Just the one.’
‘I’d hate if you’d had more. You’re talking absolute nonsense.’
‘Just hear me out. If we sell them both we can pay off our debts and you’ll be free to do what really matters…like Shard.’
‘Is this about the reunion gig?’ He’s instantly on the defensive. ‘I know you resent the time…’
‘I don’t resent it at all.’ I cut across him. ‘I’ve always felt responsible for the band’s breakup. I’m glad you’re seeing the lads again.’
‘What is it, then?’ he asks. ‘We’re managing to keep our heads above water and you love
that house.’
‘Not any more. It’s like a mausoleum since the kids left.’
‘But they’ll come back to live there,’ he says. ‘At least the twins will when they finish college. And Ali and Brian will come home for holidays.’
‘The twins won’t be back here for another four years. We’ve no idea where they’ll decide to live. Ali and Brian have never settled in Bartizan Downs. Where they stay for their holidays is not going to bother them.’
He knows I’m right. When we first moved into Bartizan Downs they were thrilled with their spacious bedrooms, the fully equipped gym in the basement, the home cinema and games room. Such giddy excitement until the novelty wore off and they returned to a sprawled position in front of the television. They demanded a yearly subscription to the Oakdale Leisure Centre where they could link up with their friends. When it was time to leave, they did so without regret. Like Eleanor and Sea Aster, they’ve never considered it their family home.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our… our….’
This is the moment to say it. Our marriage is over. We should buy two separate houses. A mews for Jake. Somewhere close to the city with space at the back to open the record studio he often talks about. I’d like something in the country, an old, converted schoolhouse, perhaps, or a cottage with a river running through my back garden.
‘Our what? Jake is waiting for me to continue. ‘Have you found something else you want to sell?’ He smiles grimly at his own joke but his gaze is wary.
Art stops at our table and interrupts what I was going to say. He plans to buy a guitar for his son’s thirteenth birthday and wants our advice. Jake makes a few suggestions and tells him to call in to see us in Tõnality.
‘You were saying?’ He leans his elbows on the table when Art leaves.
