‘I shouldn’t let him watch so much TV,’ Orla is saying, filling the kettle. ‘But it seems to be all he did at home, and, well, he’ll have to go back. If I interest him in too many other things, he’ll find the transition more difficult.’
Rory starts to listen.
‘I’ve cut out all the adult viewing, though. When he first came, he thought I was a lesbian.’
Rory laughs. ‘What?’
‘Jenna was away at school. My friend Sal’s often around. She’s separated too, and has been really good to me… Anyway, Jason put two and two together and got drama. Sal thought it was the funniest thing ever.’ She pours biscuits onto a plate and tea into mugs.
‘Orla?’
She looks up.
‘I should have rung more often.’ He hasn’t rung at all, and they both know it. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’ After a brief pause, he adds, ‘I don’t see Owen.’ It’s Rory’s way of saying he hasn’t taken sides.
‘You should. He’s your brother.’
But not the same brother, Rory thinks. Owen has changed. It’s not just the new image – tight haircut, black polo necks, designer stubble – it’s the way he fawns over this woman, feeling her up in public as if to prove his love for her. He never had to do that with Orla. With Orla, he could just be himself. It doesn’t help that he brings her everywhere. Rory has nothing to say to her, can’t look her in the eye without feeling he is betraying Orla. And so he avoids the happy couple. Not that Kate is too interested in hanging out with Owen’s family anyway. They are always off to some opening, some ‘gig’. Rory wonders if Owen stayed still for five minutes would he realize what he has given up.
‘How are you?’ Rory asks Orla now.
‘OK. Good. Better. You know.’
He doesn’t. But he’d like to. He takes a biscuit, breaks it, but forgets to eat it. ‘Must have been tough.’
‘I loved him, Rory.’ She gazes into her cup, silent then, as if that says it all. Rory is about to speak, when she continues. ‘My life was our life, my dreams our dreams. When he left, telling me to get on with my life – as if it were that simple – it was like losing everything – my husband, my soulmate, my future, my identity. Everything. Except Jenna. Then she opted for boarding school.’ Orla smiles. ‘You know, we used to threaten her with boarding school when she was small. “Do that again and it’s boarding school.”’ She shakes her head. ‘I tried to get Owen to talk her out of it, but he wanted to keep her happy, so he coughed up the fees.’
Rory wants to shake the man who seems to believe that being with a younger woman makes him a younger man able to delete his past as though it’s a computer file.
‘I’m too young for empty nest syndrome,’ Orla is saying. ‘Sorry, no nest syndrome.’ She is silent for a moment. ‘I believed him when he said there was no one else.’ She laughs. ‘What a fool! No man leaves the comfort of family life unless there is another woman.’
To Rory’s embarrassment, this makes sense to him.
‘That Christmas, I tried to send cards, but I’d been writing our names side by side for twenty years. Half my life. It was easier to not send any.’
Rory doesn’t know what to say, touched by the poignancy of what Orla has said, but also stunned to realize that she has been married so long. She is only four years older than him.
‘As soon as he left, every appliance in the house broke.’ She glances at the dishwasher. ‘In a weird way, though, I suppose it’s been good for me. I’ve learnt to be more independent.’
Doesn’t seem like much of a bargain to Rory. ‘How’s Jenna doing?’
‘I’d love to be able to tell you,’ she says. ‘But it’s a long time since we’ve had a proper conversation.’
‘Because she’s at boarding school?’
She snorts. ‘Jenna’s at boarding school to get away from me.’
Rory is confused. ‘But you’re so close.’
‘Were so close. Now, with me, she’s either silent or exploding. With Owen she’s sweetness and light.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘I don’t either. It’s my fault he left. Something like that.’
Hearing all this reassures Rory he’s right about not wanting to settle down. He sees the estate agent’s brochure for the house, lying half-covered at the edge of the table. He pulls it out. ‘Auction’s next week?’ he says, surprised that it’s happening so fast.
She looks out the window.
‘Will you go?’ he asks.
She pushes her cup away. ‘No.’
He replaces the brochure. ‘Have you found a place?’
She shakes her head. ‘I know I should be looking. But each Saturday passes without me doing anything.’ She hides the brochure under a bill. ‘When the hammer comes down, I’ll have to move on.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘I’d always hoped…’ She stops. ‘Anyway…’
‘I could look at places with you. If you want.’ Rory doesn’t know where this has come from, but now that it’s out, he’s, surprisingly, fine with it.
‘Would you?’ Her face shows relief. ‘I mean, if you’ve time?’
‘Louise works Saturdays. I just pop into the hospital for an hour or two, early in the morning. After that, I’ve nothing specific on. We could start tomorrow if you like?’
‘Could we?’ Orla sounds like she’s been offered anaesthesia.
‘Sure.’
‘Would you like to stay for dinner?’ she asks, and for a moment it feels like old times.
‘Thanks, but no. Louise and I have plans.’ He is sorry then, for sounding so smugly coupled. He is anything but smug. The chicken casserole he is planning is simply another attempt to prove to Louise that he loves her, that he is happy, not worried. That everything is still OK.
Orla starts to prepare dinner for Jason who is ‘usually starving by five’.
‘I might go in to him, see if I can distract him from the box for a while,’ Rory suggests.
‘Good luck,’ she says, as though he’ll need it.
Rory finds Jason lying on the floor in front of the TV, using Lieutenant Dan as a pillow. He is sucking his thumb.
‘Hey! Thought you might like to kick a ball around outside?’
Jason’s thumb flies out of his mouth. Otherwise, he doesn’t move. ‘Huh?’
Rory repeats the offer.
The boy lifts his head and turns around. ‘Why?’
‘Might be fun. Fresh air, exercise.’
‘Doesn’t sound like fun to me,’ he says, turning back to the TV.
‘All right, suit yourself.’
Rory is turning to leave when Jason sits up suddenly. ‘If I play, how much’ll you give me?’
Rory laughs. ‘Nothing.’
‘Forget it, then.’ Jason turns back to the TV, but doesn’t lie down.
‘OK. Tell you what…’
The boy’s head slowly turns.
‘If you’re enthusiastic out there, concentrate hard and get stuck in, I’ll give you two euro.’
Jason squints. ‘Two-fifty.’
‘Done.’ Rory offers his hand.
Jason jumps up and they shake.
‘I’ll just get the ball.’ Rory keeps a rugby ball in the car.
Once Jason gets over the fact that it ‘doesn’t fucking bounce’ and they have to pass ‘backwards’, they get into a rhythm, running up and down the garden, throwing the ball to each other. Rory, in front, passes back to Jason. Jason catches. Rory drops back, then Jason passes back to him. They speed up, everything working smoothly. The kid is good. Fast. Nimble. Still, Rory is waiting for the question – ‘Are we finished yet?’ But he underestimated the kid. The question never comes.
They’ve been outside for over forty minutes when Orla sticks her head through the patio doors and announces that dinner’s ready. Jason throws the ball to Rory and runs ahead. Face flushed, he looks alive, like Pinocchio after he’d turned into a real boy. At the door, Rory wipes his shoes, noticing that Jason is walking mud into the floor,
Orla too busy asking him how it went to notice. She gets monosyllables in response. Everything changes, though, when Rory produces the money. The boy’s face breaks into a gappy smile, one new bumpy tooth coming up between two tiny milk ones. He pockets the coins, making sure they’re deep down and safe. Walking to the table, he pats his trousers. Orla places his dinner in front of him.
‘Chicken. Yum.’ He starts to eat. Mouth full, he adds, ‘Even if I was stinkin’ rich, I still couldn’t eat a full chicken.’
Leaving the house, Rory realizes he hasn’t felt this good in a week.
7
Louise doesn’t hear him come in. She has one of his favourite albums playing and is singing, off key, to Sweet Home Alabama, while setting down a vase filled with tiger lilies too open to sell, but perfect to display. Rory eases the shopping to the ground, sneaks up on her, slipping his arms around her waist. She jumps.
‘Jesus, Rory. My heart!’
‘You’re home early,’ he says, kissing her neck.
‘You’ve the day off. Thought we’d spend some time together.’
It’s the first time she has taken off work since setting up the business. And he appreciates it.
She spots the shopping. ‘Let me guess – seventy per cent more than you’d planned?’
‘No. I was firm today. About sixty-eight.’
She helps him bring the shopping into the kitchen. ‘Let’s go out tonight,’ she says, with such enthusiasm that Rory begins to see the week from her perspective. She has stayed in every night, bar a few hours of yoga, to be with him in all his gloom. It didn’t help – the last thing he wanted was to talk and her attempts to get him to do so had interfered with his need to vegetate in front of the wide-screen – but at least she’d tried. He can do the chicken thing another time. It’s Friday night. And they’re going out. Like a normal couple who have nothing to worry about, nothing to fear.
One quick stop on the way to the restaurant – Barry and Dee’s. Present delivery. Barry answers the door, stifling a yawn with the back of a hand that holds a baby’s bottle. His face brightens when he sees who it is and he hugs them both, Rory first, then Louise, banging each on the back with his free hand. He shoos them down the hall in front of him like sheep. Into chaos. Dee’s parents and a woman who is later introduced as Dee’s aunt are visiting, everyone congregated in the tiny, outmoded kitchen. The women are fussing over the baby, while Dee’s father is trying to get his grandson out of the baby’s Moses basket, saying he’s too big and will break it. Dee is telling her father to leave him be, her hand on her forehead as if it’s been a very long day. When she sees the surprise guests, she looks like she’s going to burst into tears.
‘Congratulations, Dee, we’re not staying,’ Rory says in one breath.
Louise leaves the gift on the table, pats it once, then backs away. ‘It’s a bad time,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. We should have rung.’
‘No, no,’ says Dee, though not forcefully, pulling her baggy jumper down further over her hips and producing a smile that appears to have taken great effort.
‘You’re not leaving without champagne,’ insists a jovial Barry, who hands the baby’s bottle to his mother-in-law, with a ‘should be all right now’.
She tests the milk on the back of her hand. ‘I’ll give it another minute.’
The baby bawls. And she sticks it in his mouth.
The proud father whips out three fat cigars from a half-empty box, while Dee makes her way to the fridge as if it’s not the first time her husband has offered champagne.
‘Dee. We’re going. Honestly,’ says Louise. ‘We’ll call again. And phone first. Barry, we’ll take a rain check on the champagne. Thanks, anyway.’
Dee, looking as if all she wants to do is lie down, doesn’t argue. But Barry is already handing a cigar to Rory and another to his father-in-law.
Rory takes it with grace, sick at the thought of having to smoke it, hoping that it doesn’t trigger a flashback.
Dee’s mother frowns. ‘If you’re going to smoke those things, you’d better do it in the garden. There are babies in here.’
Standing outside the back door in the October chill, pretending to inhale, Rory listens to the intimate details of Robert’s birth. Normally, this would bore him. Tonight, he is absorbed, not so much by the detail, as the change in Barry. His normally salt-of-the-earth mate is behaving as though he has witnessed a miracle, his voice awed, at times shaky, his eyes filling. And this is his second child. Surely, he should have got used to the experience – an experience, Rory remembers, he may never have. He stares out into the darkness. ‘Back in a sec,’ he says, his voice croaky, already making for the door.
Inside, he hurries past the women, failing to see Louise trying to catch his eye or Dee’s mother frowning at the cigar still in his hand. In the downstairs loo, he lowers the toilet seat and sits on it. Remembering the cigar, he gets up again and goes to the sink, where he douses it under the tap, wraps it in toilet paper and stuffs it in his pocket. He sits back on the loo. Looks at the plastic step that has been placed in front of the sink for Jamie to reach the taps. He imagines hairless arms with dimpled elbows reaching for the frogshaped soap dispenser and pressing down on its green and purple head to get the liquid soap flowing. He imagines the generous amount that will be taken. He imagines the smile on the boy’s face when he sees the bubbles. What’s wrong with him? He has no interest in children. And he’s not going to start now, just because he knows he might never be able to have any. That would make him something his father was always fond of calling him, a spoiled brat.
‘Fuck,’ he says aloud.
He spots a book of Garry Larson cartoons lying on the top of a reading pile. That’s more like it. He flicks through it and starts to smile. It takes a good five minutes before he’s sufficiently distracted. Then he’s ready to face the world. On his way back through the kitchen, he catches Louise’s eye. It says, ‘let’s go’. He nods quickly. Outside, he waits until the men have finished their smokes before making his excuses.
Louise fastens her seat belt while Rory turns the ignition.
Her voice is flat when she asks, ‘What kept you?’
‘A big smelly turd,’ he jokes, sensing tension.
She doesn’t laugh. ‘I meant, what kept you outside?’
He indicates and takes a right turn, ignoring the question.
‘Why did you leave me in there with the women and children? We’re in the twenty-first century, not the bloody Titanic. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I want to hold the baby. Jesus.’
This is not what he needs. ‘What did you expect me to do?’ he asks, irritated.
‘I don’t know. Insist we go, straight away.’
‘I did.’
‘Not strongly enough.’
‘Come on, Louise. I was letting Barry have his moment. Didn’t you see him? He was over the moon. He just wanted to share it.’
‘You could have asked me to come outside.’
His face says, ‘You can’t be serious.’
She pulls a piece of nicotine gum from her bag, unwraps it quickly, and stuffs it in her mouth. She chews as if her life depends on it. Then parks the gum. ‘I just don’t want it, that life.’
Rory looks at her. So this isn’t about him after all.
‘Not every woman does,’ she says. She rummages in her bag and in seconds has a cigarette between her fingers and is snapping her lighter. She leans her cigarette into it and inhales deeply. Her head tilts back. After a moment, she removes the gum from her mouth.
Why not? he wants to ask. For the first time in their relationship he wants to say, ‘What’s wrong with that life?’ Instead, he rolls down the window and breathes in the night air.
Rory chose the restaurant on the basis that they’ve always had good times here, fun times. Considering the week they’ve had, he thought they might need a little help on the atmosphere front. As soon as he enters, though, he is overcome by panic. What has always seemed a hap
py, buzzing vibe is now noisy, overcrowded, claustrophobic – a market in downtown Tokyo, too many people, too little space. His eyes dart to Louise. What excuse can he come up with to leave? She is chatting politely to the Asian waitress who is now walking ahead, leading them to their table. For a moment, he hesitates, letting them go. Then he tells himself to be a man. Be Sergeant O’Neill. And, for God’s sake, breathe.
When Louise moves towards the seat with the view, Rory is tempted to make a dive for it. With a wall behind him, security at his back, no one could jump him, catch him unawares. But Louise is sliding in, leaving him the seat with its back to the aisle. Rory pulls the chair right in. His body is rigid. He tells himself that if he focuses on Louise, he will be all right. If he just concentrates on that face – those dark, dark eyes, those long thick lashes, the mole on her cheekbone – everything will be fine. She has curled her hair. Is that new lipstick? Fuck.
‘So, how did it go with Orla?’ she asks. ‘Did she like the flowers?’
‘She loved them,’ he says, knowing how important Louise’s business is to her. ‘Said she’d have to give you some business herself.’ He checks behind him, looking up and down the aisle.
‘Did she? That’s sweet.’
When another waitress, a blonde wearing a black T-shirt, arrives quietly and suddenly at his side, Rory jumps. Then apologizes. She asks if they’re ready to order, her accent Australian. They select their usual, Malaysian Chicken. Rory plans to eat fast, get the hell home.
‘So how’s Orla doing?’ Louise asks.
‘Lou, would you mind if we swapped seats?’
She looks surprised. ‘No.’
‘The view,’ he says. ‘For a change.’ He always lets her have the good seat. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Nope.’
They swap over. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Orla.’
He relates an abridged version of his conversation with his sister-in-law. Then the Australian is back, placing their meals in various bowls in front of them and asking if they know what to do with the dishes. They do. So she leaves them to it. Louise picks up her chopsticks, Rory his knife and fork. He starts to relax. They eat in silence for a few minutes, then Louise asks about ‘the foster kid’.
Do You Want What I Want? Page 5
