by Tom Lennon
A fat bustling woman opened the door. “You’ve come to see Eddie?” she said before either of them got a chance to speak. “C’mon on in, don’t be standin’ there,” she added, ushering them into the tiny hallway. A young girl of about eight sat on the stairs, filling in a coloring book. She dropped her eyes shyly when Neil smiled at her.
“He’s not feelin’ the best today,” Daphne’s mother said, opening the living room door. “Now, Eddie love,” she announced in a loud but tender voice, “some of yer friends here to see ya.”
Neil and Shane exchanged a tentative glance as they followed her into the room. Daphne’s mother straightened out her son’s pillows and helped him to sit up. Neil noticed a large picture of the Sacred Heart and a crucifix hanging over Daphne’s bed, which was tucked into the corner of the snug living room. Just like in his own house, all the furniture seemed to revolve around the television. Numerous family photos and other trinkets lined the mantelpiece.
“I’ll leave ya alone,” Daphne’s mother said, going out and closing the door.
“Hello, sisters,” Daphne said in a croaky voice, struggling to muster some life into his bones. Neil couldn’t stop staring at the emaciated face, the eyes sunk deep into the head, the mouth that looked like an old witch’s mouth, and the nose whose length was accentuated by the hollow cheeks. He reminded Neil of the pictures in their history books of Holocaust victims.
“How’s the man?” Shane said, leaning over to kiss Daphne’s cheek. Neil felt himself retch as he followed suit. A musty smell of death lingered in the air. He noticed that Daphne’s skeleton-like fingers were clutching a set of rosary beads.
“Give me a cigarette before I scream,” Daphne said, forcing a smile onto his face. Neil’s hands were shaking as he lit the cigarette.
“Mother doesn’t allow me to smoke,” Daphne added with an exaggerated sigh. “I think she’s afraid it’ll have a detrimental effect on my sex drive.”
Neil and Shane laughed, delighted that some of the zest was beginning to return to Daphne’s eyes.
“I hope you two dears are going to invite me to your wedding,” he continued, pointing at the two visitors. “After all, I did do a little spadework on your behalf.”
“You’re going to be our best man,” Shane said.
“Can I wear a dress?” Daphne asked with a mock sigh.
“You needn’t wear anything if you don’t want to,” Shane told him.
“Oh now, I don’t want to shock Neil’s parents,” Daphne said, winking at Neil. Neil was grinning away. He knew that Daphne was trying to drag him into the conversation, that he sensed the pity in Neil’s eyes. And Neil wanted to say something to Daphne, something meaningful, but there was a look in Daphne’s tired eyes that warned him that he wasn’t going to entertain any attempts at pity.
“Speaking of dresses, I had Gladys and Penelope in to see me last week,” Daphne said, rolling his eyes upward. “What a pair of pansies!”
Neil snorted.
“Of course, Mother only encouraged them, telling them that they looked wonderful.”
Neil tried to imagine the reaction of the kids on the road when Gladys and Penelope stepped out of their taxi.
“I feel like Pinocchio,” Daphne sighed, rubbing his nose.
“Lots of guys go for big hooters,” Shane told him.
“Stop that now. We’ll have none of your toilet talk in here,” Daphne said, wagging his finger.
Neil’s concentration drifted in and out of the conversation. He laughed loudly every time Daphne wanted a laugh, but his thoughts were about death. He’s going to die, isn’t he, Jesus? He’s going to just slip away unnoticed. And that cruel graffiti outside will remain to serve as a constant reminder to his family. A reminder of how much everyone loved him.
His daydream was interrupted by Daphne’s coughing fit. His fragile body went into uncontrollable convulsions. The poor fellow looked terrified. The rosary beads came free from his grasp and fell onto the floor. Neil picked them up and placed them on the bedside table. Both he and Shane were standing by helplessly when Daphne’s mother came quickly into the room. She motioned them out into the hallway. Before he left the room, Neil turned to see her sitting by the bed, holding her son the way a mother would hold a newborn infant.
Neil and Shane went into the kitchen where the girl with the coloring book and a younger boy were sitting at the table. The effect of the coughing in the other room was written all over their worried faces. Shane and Neil struggled to engage them in small talk. The girl was Daphne’s sister, and the boy, who had the most adorable brown eyes, was his nephew. Got your Uncle Daphne’s dark eyes, Neil felt like saying to the kid. While Shane persisted with the small talk, Neil’s attention drifted to the portable TV that was on in the corner of the room with the volume turned down. An enlarged image of an embryo in a womb came up on the screen. The tiny, wriggling, red-veined, saucer-eyed fetus fascinated him. It was hard to imagine that he was once like that, curled up helplessly inside his mum’s womb. Going everywhere with her: down to the shops in Blackrock, into the church every morning, sunbathing in the back garden, driving in the car, and then snuggling up inside her in bed every night, with Dad snoring away beside them. The shy little girl tapped Neil’s sleeve, and he had to turn away from the haunting TV image and admire her drawing.
The awkward interchanges ended with the return of Daphne’s mother to the kitchen. “He’s asleep now, God love him,” she sighed, taking her apron off. “Move over there, Darren, love, and let the two boys sit down.”
“Ah, it’s all right, Mrs. O’Reilly,” Neil said. “We better head off now anyway.”
“Sit down there, I’ve made a little grub for ya,” Daphne’s mother insisted, taking a full plate of ham and cheese sandwiches out of the fridge. Neil smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Sure, look at ya,” she said, prodding Neil’s ribs, “you’d get more meat in a vegetable stew.”
The two children made room for Neil and Shane at the table.
“Sit down there now and get them into ya,” she added, rubbing her hands together heartily.
“Ya forgot the soup, Granny,” Darren chipped in.
“Oh Janey, I don’t know what I’m doing,” the woman exclaimed, turning to get the soup. As he ate, Neil was conscious of the little boy’s stare. But every time he turned to smile at him, the boy looked away bashfully.
“Ya know that he has it, don’t ya?” Daphne’s mother whispered out of the blue.
“Sorry?” Shane was puzzled.
“The virus…He’s goin’ to die, like.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane replied awkwardly.
“Please God, it won’t drag on too long,” she added, blinking back her tears.
An uncomfortable pause followed. The two children were sent outside to play in the back garden. All the jolliness returned to the woman’s face when she started to talk about Daphne’s younger days.
“When he was fourteen, he told me that he was gay,” she said, chuckling to herself. “The poor fella, he thought he was tellin’ me somethin’ I didn’t know already…Me, his mother!” Her eyes bulged for effect, exactly the way Daphne’s did.
Neil and Shane smiled.
“Sure, he had pictures of George Michael plastered all over his bedroom wall!”
The two lads laughed out loud.
“And then it was Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson and, oh God, I lost track after that. But d’you know, lads, sometimes I think maybe I’m to blame for the way he is now.”
“Don’t be silly,” Shane said firmly.
“Maybe I should’ve discouraged him,” she sighed.
“I wish my mother was like you,” Shane added.
Neil grimaced as he imagined what his own mum’s reaction would have been if he had dropped such a bombshell at fourteen.
“You wouldn’t think it now, but he was such a sweet, gentle little fella then,” she continued lovingly, “sure if I didn’t stick by him, God knows what would’
ve happened to him.” The tears had begun to well up in her eyes again.
Shane touched her hand gently. “He’s lucky to have you.”
“You boys are very good for visiting him,” she said. “He doesn’t have many friends.”
Neil wanted to hug the poor woman. He wanted to tell her that he often spoke to Jesus, and that he was certain that a better place awaited her son.
“He gets very depressed…Especially at night, when the pain comes, and he can’t sleep.”
Neil swallowed hard.
“I love my boy—but I hope Jesus takes him home soon,” she said, brushing the tears from her cheeks.
Neil noticed the huge bolt lock nailed to the foot of the front door. He was standing at the bottom of the narrow stairway, waiting for the taxi company to answer the phone. The door to Daphne’s makeshift bedroom was slightly ajar. Neil was tempted to sneak upstairs and check how many people were actually crammed under the one roof. Judging by the photos on the mantelpiece, he guessed that it resembled a refugee camp. Then, a bedroom door upstairs opened, and four girls in their mid-teens appeared at the top of the stairs. Their giggly chatter halted abruptly the moment they spotted him. Each of them smiled shyly as they passed him. The last one down was a double for Daphne. The same dark eyes, thin features, and mousy brown hair.
“Hiya,” she said, obviously feeling it her duty as the one who lived in the house to speak to the stranger.
“Hiya.” Neil blushed, conscious that his accent didn’t go unnoticed by the girls. No doubt they’d have fun imitating him once they got outside. Daphne’s sister went into the kitchen and her three friends stood in the hallway, doing their utmost to pretend that they weren’t listening to Neil.
“I’d like to book a taxi please…”
Daphne’s sister had rejoined her friends by the time Neil had finished his phone call.
“You’re Neil, aren’t ya?” she smiled.
“Yeah.” Neil was taken aback.
“Me bruds told me all ’bout ya.”
“Did he?” Neil felt his face burning.
“Don’t worry, we don’t give a fuck if yer gay,” she said. “Do we, girls?”
Her three friends shook their heads, and Neil could see that they meant it. Then Daphne’s sister stretched up onto her tippy toes and kissed Neil’s cheek.
“Thanks for visitin’ him,” she said.
Neil just grinned at her. He couldn’t think what to say. It wasn’t every day that he met four young girls with such liberal views. Good old Daphne had obviously been influential in the formation of these views. Neil pictured the four girls, lounging on a bed upstairs, squealing with delight as Daphne painted the vivid kaleidoscope of his nocturnal adventures, some of which Neil had no doubt featured in.
“See ya, Eddie,” each one of the girls whispered through the open door before squeezing past Neil and out the front door.
Neil and Shane barely spoke on the taxi journey back into town. The taxi driver soon realized that any attempts at making conversation were futile. They came upon a wedding in Fairview. The traffic had come to a virtual standstill. Car horns hooted, crowds of passersby stopped to look, everyone wanted to join in the special day. The pretty bride, dressed all in white, was smiling brightly and waving to the throng of confetti-throwing well-wishers while the groom struggled to lift her into the wedding car. Her happy, radiant smile seemed to transcend all the gloom of the day. Clinging on to each other, the lovers posed for endless photographs. “The happiest day of my life,” his sister Kate had once said about her wedding day. Neil remembered the bitter, stinging pain he felt inside his thirteen-year-old heart when she uttered those words. And how he went to bed that night and prayed that Jesus would take him up to heaven, that it would be better than facing the years of always being the outsider that lay ahead of him. But those days all seemed so far away now.
Across the road, the white wedding car finally began to pull away slowly from the church. Smiling to himself, Neil wondered what Daphne would’ve said if he were there with them. “Sister! Sister! It should’ve been me!” he probably would’ve shrieked. But in the backseat of that taxi Neil made one of the biggest decisions of his life. Seeing Daphne the way he was had changed his life forever. He was going to tell his mum and dad.
Yo Jesus! What’s happenin’, dude? This is your old pal Neil. Remember me? Course you do. Listen, sorry for calling on you at such short notice, but we’re talking something major here. I’m going through with it, so you better stick around. I’m standing in the hallway, trying to muster up the courage to go in. They’re in the living room watching the television. What’s new? says you. Anyway, you probably want to know why I’m doing it. Well, it’s simple. I’m tired of telling lies. Maybe it’s because of Daphne, I don’t know, but I can’t live with this pretense any longer. You see, I’m happier now. Well, sort of, anyway. I’ve been staying the night over at Shane’s gaff quite a lot recently. I never really believed that anything like this was ever going to happen in my life. I thought beautiful moments were the preserve of the rhyming couplets. Like the first night Gary climbed in through Trish’s bedroom window. God, I thought he’d never stop going on about it. Of course all my friends think I’ve gone weird. They never see me now. I told them I had a new girlfriend named—wait for it—Daphne. I couldn’t resist it. Then, Gary kept asking when they were going to meet this mysterious Daphne, so I told him that it was a bit awkward, because she was married. You should’ve seen the face on him! I thought he was going to drop a litter of kittens on the spot. And my mum, well she’s starting to ask questions. She’s worried, she doesn’t know what’s happening. Or maybe she does. She must’ve noticed my beard rash. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’m in love. Well, I think I am, and I want to celebrate that love, not hide it. I know what you’re thinking; it’s wrong, it’s against nature, it’s whatever. But you see the thing is, J.C., you or your old fella made me this way, and I can’t help it, the feelings are too strong…Maybe you don’t think it’s wrong. I doubt that you’re the type that would want to see me miserable again. I don’t know, but it doesn’t really worry me whether you do or not. No point in lying to you, is there? Things are never going to be the same again after this. They’re always going to look at me and wonder where I was the night before, who I was with, what I was doing. And, of course, they’re always going to imagine the worst. Wouldn’t surprise me if my mum becomes a twice-daily communicant, so that’s good news for you. Anyway, I have my bag packed upstairs just in case. Something tells me that I might be leaving home tonight. Stick close, J.C., here I go.
His dad’s face turned ashen and he stared down blankly at his shoes. His mum sank her face into her hands and started to whimper. The television had been switched off. Neil shifted uncomfortably; he had never seen his parents react like this to anything before. It was as though he had told them that he was going to die. Not even Paul’s motorbike crash shook them as much as this. Then his mum hugged him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Even his speechless dad’s eyes were glistening.
“It’s okay, Mum, it’s not the end of the world.”
There was no reply. Neil swallowed the lump in his own throat. He wanted to tell them that worse things could happen. That a fire could burn the house down that night and frizzle them all to cinders. So what was the big fuss?
Then his dad spoke sensitively. “Look, Neil, a lot of young fellows your age are often uncertain about their, eh…their sexuality…But it’s probably just a passing phase.”
“It’s not a passing phase, Dad, I’ve known for ages.”
Neil felt sorry for his father. This was the first time he had ever seen him look so lost. His life’s foundations had been rocked. But Neil braced himself. It was now time to tell them the truth about being beaten up, and more importantly it was time to tell them about Shane.
“Jesus Christ!” His dad slammed his fist down angrily on the small coffee table.
“Brendan.” His mum tri
ed to appease him.
“You mean to say that you’ve been going into those queer pubs!”
“You heard what I said, Dad,” Neil said, averting his eyes from his father’s furious glare.
“And that you and that…that Northern pervert have been—in this house! Jesus Christ!”
Where are you, Jesus? Feel like crying now. They really don’t know me at all. They’re just like everyone else. Feel lonelier than ever before. Even thinking of Shane doesn’t cure it. Better I die now. Make it something quick and painless, a brain hemorrhage or whatever. It’d be a huge funeral. All of Blackrock would be there, and the blokes on the rugby team would form a guard of honor. No one need ever know the truth. Let them keep this secret, let them keep their sweet memories of me.
“Look, I don’t mind you thinking that you’re homosexual or whatever, but no son of mine is going to start getting involved in all this queer carry-on.”
Neil looked at his mum with pleading eyes. But she just gazed at him pitifully and shook her head.
“You shouldn’t have told us all those lies, Neil,” she said.
“I don’t like it anymore than you do,” he stuttered. “But I’m the one who has to live with it. It’s the way God has made me.”
“This has nothing to do with God!” his dad roared.
“Brendan, stop,” his mum pleaded weakly.
But Neil was undaunted. “You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been.”
“Unhappy?” his dad snarled. “What’ve you got to be unhappy about? You’ve got everything laid on a plate for you: Brains. Sports. College. Jesus!”
“But I’ve always been alone.”
“Alone? For Christ’s sake, the phone never stops ringing for you.”
“You know what I mean.”
His dad snorted derisively. “Do I?”
“Please don’t be like that.” Neil’s voice started to waver. “I love both of you, and I hoped that you would stand by me. But if you want me out of your life, just say it, and I’ll go, and you need never see me again.”
