by Marian Keyes
‘But,’ I shifted uncomfortably, ‘shouldn’t I get a job? I feel so guilty not working.’
‘Not at all,’ she scoffed, as if the mere suggestion was hilarious. ‘What do you want to work for? Lie out in the garden, get a tan, sure this is the life, girl.’
‘But…’
‘And what would you do? You don’t know what you want to do with your life,’ she said, as if that was something to be proud of. ‘You will eventually. Anyway, aren’t you getting the dole?’
I nodded cagily.
‘Well, then!’ she sang. ‘You’ve enough money to survive on. So think of this as a convalescence, like getting over a bad dose of the flu, a flu of your emotions. And in the meantime, get a colour on your legs!’
‘How long,’ I asked anxiously, ‘will I have to live like this?’
‘For as long as it takes,’ she said airily.
‘OK, OK!’ she said quickly to my woebegone face. ‘They said a year in the Cloisters, didn’t they? Concentrate on getting better for a year and then you’ll see how well you’ve become. Try and be patient.’
She was very convincing but, just to be on the safe side, I mentioned to Mum and Dad that I was thinking of getting a job. And the torrent of objections I got from them convinced me that it was OK, at least for a while, to be a long-haired layabout.
To my surprise, I didn’t think about drugs as often as I’d thought I would. And I was amazed to find I had as much fun with Nola, Jeanie and Gobnet as I’d ever had with Brigit. We went to meetings, to each other’s houses, to the cinema, shopping, sunbathed in each other’s gardens. Everything normal friends did together, except drink and take drugs.
I was very relaxed with them because they knew how bad I’d been, at my very, very worst, and they didn’t judge me. For every story of shame and humiliation I had, they could top it.
As well as the meetings, I had psychotherapy sessions with an addiction counsellor on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Slowly my internal landscape altered. I extricated myself from the mesh of preconceptions I had about myself, as though from barbed wire. It was a great day when I understood I didn’t have to think I was thick just because I had a very bright sister.
My view of my past also changed as my counsellor demystified childhood situations, in the same way that Josephine had pointed out that I wasn’t to blame for my mother’s misery after Anna was born. Repeatedly, it was pointed out to me that I hadn’t been a bad child, that I wasn’t a bad person.
It was like watching a photo developing, very slowly, over the course of a year, as I gradually came into focus.
And as I changed, other things fell into place. I reckoned I was always going to have a great fondness for savoury snacks and chocolate, but the wild swinging between starving myself and stuffing myself had calmed down a lot, without me even having to try.
That’s not to say that I didn’t still have bad days. I did.
Things didn’t improve in a smooth straight line. For every two steps I took forward, I took one step back. There were times when I just wanted to switch off, just check out of reality for a while, when relentless consciousness got me down. Nothing bad had to have happened, I just got tired of being sentient.
Not to mention times when the sadness of my wasted years just floored me for a while. And I got bouts of terrible guilt at the hurt and worry I’d caused to so many people, but Nola assured me that when I was a bit better, I’d make it up to them. Although I didn’t like the sound of that either.
It was like living on a rollercoaster because at yet other times I was assailed by rage at drawing the short straw and becoming an addict.
As every emotion under the sun bubbled out of me in no particular order, I couldn’t have survived without the meetings. Nola and the others comforted, bolstered, reassured, encouraged and calmed me. No matter what I felt, they’d felt it too. And, as they kept saying, ‘We survived it, we’re happy now.’
They were particularly invaluable during the great G-string wars, which blew up out of nowhere. I’d thought that, after the great bedside reconciliation, my mother and I would never fight again.
Wrong. Very, very wrong indeed.
Oh, you couldn’t even begin to imagine how wrong.
What happened was, everyone knows that Visible Panty Line is a bad thing, right? No one wants to have their knickers on display through their boot-leg pants, do they? And everyone knows that the solution to this is to either wear no knickers at all, or to wear a G-string. Everyone knows this.
Wearing a G-string doesn’t mean you’re a stripper or a brazen hussy, on the contrary, it implies great modesty. But you should have tried telling that to my mother.
She appeared in my room, all abject and mortified. She had something to tell me, she said. Work away, I cheerfully invited. With a trembling hand she advanced a small scrap of black lace.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘I don’t know how it happened, but the washing-machine must have shrunk or shredded these knickers.’
I examined said knickers, found that they were actually a G-string, and that there was nothing wrong.
‘They’re fine,’ I reassured her.
‘They’re ruined,’ she insisted.
‘They’re fine,’ I said again.
‘But they’re completely unwearable,’ she said, looking at me as if I was mad.
‘They’re in perfect condition,’ I said.
‘Look!’ she commanded, holding it up to the light. ‘This wouldn’t cover an ant’s backside.’ She was pointing to the front bit.
‘And as for this,’ she demonstrated the string which gave the garment its name. ‘What use is this to anyone?
‘What amazes me,’ she confided, ‘is how it shredded away so evenly, just leaving this nice straight line.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said, kindly. And, taking the G-string from her, explained. ‘This isn’t for the bum, this is for the front. And this nice straight line here is actually for the back.’
She stared at me, understanding dawning. Then her mouth began to work convulsively and her face became dark red. She backed away from me, as if I was highly infectious. Eventually, she started to screech ‘You brazen HUSSY! That might be the kind of thing they wear in New York, but you’re not in New York now and while you’re under my roof you’ll cover yourself like a Christian.’
I felt the old fear take hold. I was shaking and nauseous from the shouting and confrontation. It was horrible, it felt like the end of the world. I legged it out of the room, wanting to kill myself, kill Mum, run away to sea and ingest handfuls of chemicals.
But this time, instead of belting into town and seeking out Tiernan, I rang Nola. And she came and took me to a meeting. Where she and the others calmed me. Told me it was understandable to be upset, reassured me that I’d live through it, that it would pass in no time. Naturally, I didn’t believe them. All I wanted to do was take drugs.
‘Course you do.’ Gobnet coughed, lighting a cigarette. ‘You’ve never done anything upsetting without getting off your tits.’
‘It’s dead easy,’ Nola said soothingly. ‘All you have to do is learn new responses to everything.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. She was so positive it was frightening.
‘But it’s so hard,’ I said.
‘’Tisn’t,’ Nola sang. ‘It’s only new. Practise.’
‘I’m going to move out of home,’ I declared.
‘Oh no.’ They adamantly shook their heads at that. ‘Fights are part of life, far better to learn to live with them.’
‘It’ll never be OK with Mum again,’ I said sulkily.
And I was almost disappointed when, in less than a day, the scrap was over and forgotten about.
‘The next barney you have with her will be even easier,’ Jeanie advised me.
It gave me grudging pleasure when it turned out she was right.
Time continued to pass, the way it does. And still I didn’t relapse. I fe
lt different. Better, calmer.
The only bad thing that showed no sign of shifting was the rage I had for Brigit and Luke. I couldn’t explain why. God knows, all that they’d said was true. But, every time I thought about them coming to the Cloisters and saying what they did, I felt uncontrollable fury.
Everything else in my life improved, though. I no longer had to do things I hated, like steal money or borrow money with no intention of paying it back, or skip work because I was too sick, or end up in bed with some horrible man that I wouldn’t have gone near if I hadn’t been out of my skull. I never woke up racked with shame and guilt about the way I’d behaved the night before. I had my dignity back.
I wasn’t constantly tormented with worry about when I’d next be taking something, or about where to get it or who to get it from. Mine was no longer an existence where I had to lie constantly. Drugs had put a wall between me and everyone else. A wall that wasn’t just chemical, but made of secrecy, mistrust and dishonesty.
At least now when I was with people I could look them in the eye, because, unlike the last year or so with Brigit, I had nothing to hide.
I was no longer tortured by stomach-turning, vague, nameless anxiety. And that was because I wasn’t letting people down or being dishonest or cruel or unkind to anyone.
And I never felt the savage depressions that followed a good night out.
‘That makes sense,’ Nola agreed. ‘You’ve stopped putting powerful depressant chemicals into your body, no wonder you feel better.’
Things that I once would have died before being caught doing, brought me great joy. Like visiting my butcher friend, making dinner for my family or going for a walk on the seafront. There was huge pleasure in the simple things. Patrick Kavanagh’s Advent came to me often, the way it had when I first entered the Cloisters. We have tested and tasted too much, lover, through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
And I learnt about integrity and loyalty to my friends. I had to, with Helen around. Whenever she answered the phone to any of the NA people, she’d shout ‘Rachel, it’s one of your loser, junkie friends, one of the ones who wasn’t able to hack it.’
In my previous life, I would have submitted to Helen’s – or anyone’s – scorn and terminated contact with the N A person forthwith. But not now.
Occasionally, just for the laugh, I’d say ‘What are you so afraid of, Helen?’ to put the frighteners on her.
Until one day Helen bumped into Nola and me in town.
‘You’re Nola?’ she screeched in palpable disbelief. ‘But you look…’
Nola raised one eyebrow in a questioning gesture that was highly glamorous.
‘You look normal,’ Helen blurted. ‘Better than normal. Lovely. Your hair, your clothes…’
‘That’s nothing, girl,’ Nola said in her sing-song voice. ‘You’d want to see my car.’
‘And her husband,’ I added proudly.
I never once saw Chris at any of the meetings I went to. After a while I stopped looking for him.
Eventually I forgot about him altogether.
Until the night Helen approached me, looking awkward and nervous. Immediately I was worried,
Helen never looked awkward and nervous.
‘What?!’ I barked at her, racked with anxiety.
‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I shouted. ‘That’s obvious.’
‘Promise you won’t be cross,’ she beseeched.
I realized something really terrible must have happened.
‘I promise,’ I lied.
‘I’ve got a new boyfriend,’ she said sheepishly.
I almost puked. I no longer wanted him, but I didn’t want him riding my sister when he couldn’t sustain an erection with me.
‘And you know him,’ she said.
I know.
‘He was in your laughing house.’
I know.
‘And I know he’s not supposed to go out with anyone until he’s a year off the jar, but I’m mad about him,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t help it.’
‘Not jar, drugs,’ I said, in a daze.
‘What?’
‘Chris was in for drugs, not drink,’ I said, not knowing why I needed to explain this to her.
‘Chris who?’
‘Chris Hutchinson, your…’ I forced myself to say it. ‘… fella.’
‘No,’ she looked really puzzled. ‘Barry Courtney, my fella.’
‘Barry?’ I mumbled. ‘Barry who?’
‘You all called him Barry the child in the bin,’ she said.
‘But he’s no child,’ she added defensively. ‘He’s man enough for me!’
‘Oh God,’ I said weakly.
‘And what’s all this shite about Chris?’ she demanded. ‘Oh CHRIS!’ she exclaimed. ‘The one who wouldn’t do the anal sex.’
‘Yes.’ I watched her. Somehow I knew something had happened.
‘Did he ever ask you out?’ I asked. ‘And don’t lie to me or I’ll tell Barry’s counsellor that he’s in a relationship and he’ll be forced to break it off with you.’
I watched the struggle on her face.
‘Once,’ she admitted. Ages and ages ago. He came into Club Mexxx off his knob on something.
‘I said no,’ she added quickly.
‘Why?’ I braced myself for pain, but to my surprise felt almost nothing.
‘’Cos he was a creep.’ She shrugged. ‘Giving everyone that “oh you’re so special” shit. He didn’t fool me. Anyway I wouldn’t go out with someone that you’d fiddled and interfered with.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked, mortified.
‘Because you were having relapses and getting knocked down and nearly killed and I just thought you’d be better off not knowing,’ she explained.
I had to admit she’d done the right thing, at the time. I could handle it now, though.
69
Autumn whizzed by and the weather got colder and edged into winter.
Something changed. I found I wasn’t angry with Luke or Brigit anymore. I couldn’t pinpoint when it happened, because brotherly love and forgiveness don’t wake you up in the middle of the night and do grand-prix laps in your head, the way vengeance and hatred do.
You don’t lie there, fully awake at five in the morning, grind your teeth and visualize going up to the people you feel really fond of and shaking them by the hand. And saying… and saying… and saying… ‘I’m sorry.’ No wait, and saying ‘I’m really sorry.’ (Yeah, that’d show them.) You don’t lie there and plan that once you’ve done that you’re going to smile warmly. And for a parting shot ask ‘Any chance we might be friends?’
Feelings of softness and fidelity don’t lap at the back of your teeth and make horrible tastes in your mouth.
For the first time I realized how selfish and self-centred I was. How horrendous it must have been for Brigit and Luke, living with me and the chaos I’d created.
I felt unbearably sad for them, for all the misery and worry they’d been put through. Poor Brigit, poor Luke. I cried and cried and cried and cried. And for the first time in my life it wasn’t for me.
With terrible clarity I saw what an ordeal it must have been for them to get on a plane and come to the Cloisters and say what they’d said. Of course, Josephine and Nola and everyone else had been blue in the face telling me that, but I hadn’t been ready to face it until now.
I’d never have admitted I was an addict if Luke and Brigit hadn’t confronted me so violently with the truth. And I was grateful to them.
I remembered the awful final scene with Luke and I now understood his fury.
It had been building up over the weekend. On the Saturday night we’d gone to a party and, while Luke was talking to Anya’s boyfriend about music, I wandered towards the kitchen. Looking for something, anything. Very bored. In the hall I met David, a kind of friend of Jessica’s. He was en route to the bathroom with a small but perfectly formed bag of coke, and he in
vited me to join him.
I’d been trying to stay away from the snow because Luke got so narky about it. But a free line was too much to resist. And I was flattered that David was so friendly.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I said, quickly belting into the bathroom after him.
I got back to Luke
‘Babe.’ He slid his arm around my waist. ‘Where were you?’
‘You know,’ I sniffed. ‘Talking to people.’
I thought I did a pretty good job of hiding my buzz by lurking behind my hair. But Luke pulled me up to look at him and, as soon as he saw my face, he knew. His pupils contracted with anger and something else. Disappointment?
‘You’ve been doing drugs,’ he bit.
‘I haven’t,’ I said, opening my eyes wide with sincerity.
‘Don’t fucking lie to me,’ he said, and stalked off.
I was shocked to see him actually pick up his jacket and leave the party. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of letting him go. Then I could get off my face without anyone breathing down my neck. But things had been so tense with us lately that I was afraid to take the risk. I ran down into the street after him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I gasped when I caught up with him. ‘It was only one line, I won’t do it again.’
He turned to me, his face contorted with anger and pain.
‘You keep saying sorry,’ he shouted, his breath making clouds in the freezing February night. ‘But you don’t mean it.’
‘I am sorry,’ I protested. At that moment I was sorry. I was always sorry when he was angry with me. I desired him most when I thought I was just on the verge of losing him.
‘Oh Rachel,’ he groaned, wearily.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home and go to bed.’
I knew he couldn’t resist me, that a good ride would shut him up. But when we went to bed he didn’t lay a finger on me.
The next day he was his usual affectionate self, and I knew he’d forgiven me. He always did, yet I felt extremely depressed. As if I’d done a full two grams the night before, instead of just one line. After I’d taken a few Valium the bleakness dissolved and I was wrapped in a warm, fuzzy cradle.
