by John Lynch
I see my sister fall to her knees; hear the soft crunch as she hits the snow. She bends her head and stays that way for a moment, stealing glances at our mother’s body. The world around us bristles with noise, from the construction work on a new house across the fields to the sound of the wind blowing our hearts wide open.
I make a move towards her body. I don’t know what I will do when I get there. I don’t want to touch her, to feel her iced flesh beneath my warm fingers.
‘Don’t,’ my sister says.
‘We can’t just do nothing,’ I say.
‘Why not, what difference will it make?’
She was thawed out and buried. The expression on her face remained though, the one of dismay, that now she would carry for eternity. She became famous in death for a little while; the undertakers said that it had been a long time since they’d had to collect a frozen one. She was buried beside her husband; even in death she would not be free of him. She wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, for all that she had learned about him, for all that she sensed, he was hers, God-given and joined forever. I often thought of her kneeling there in that winter painted landscape where we found her, like an aged and wrinkled Madonna, her hands clasped, her knees rooted in the soil, her eyes half lidded, her soul flown.
References
He smiles as he fires me. Both of his hands are on the desk in front of him, and though he is smiling his eyes are cold and glassy as if was I dead to him. He tells me that he has been patient; he has bitten his tongue as far as I was concerned but that this time it was serious, that the events of the previous few weeks had made his mind up for him. You must realise, he says, that there has been a serious clamouring for your dismissal and I have resisted more than I feel anyone else in my position would have done. I’m not a bad person, he says to me, you must understand this, I am not a bad man, but things cannot go on the way they have done.
I suppose I am relieved, at least that’s what I tell myself as I look him directly in the eyes and see a man who is frightened of being disliked. It makes me pity him. It’s all about him, about how I will remember him. He’s weak, all tyrants are. He explains to me that he had hoped that the little break he had given me after my episode in the theatre, as he puts it, would have sorted me out. We all know that you have been under enormous pressure especially with your mother’s illness and death, but the occurrence in the classroom the other day has forced my hand, you see, now the parents of some of the students are involved and once that happens, well…He raises his hands off the desk to let them finish the sentence for him. It is the first time he’s moved them.
Still I don’t speak. I sit there wondering what I will say to my wife, but that quickly fades to be replaced by a bloody-mindedness, fuck what she thinks, fuck what any of them think. Boyle tells me that never in twenty-five years of public service has he known a case like mine. Drunk at the theatre, drunk in class, never has he had a teacher put the welfare and the security of twenty pupils in jeopardy before. I want to say that I think that he’s going a bit too far, but I leave it. He’s finding the whole firing thing difficult, and the less I speak the more uncomfortable he feels which is fine by me. I think of the first time I arrived at the school over seven years before. I remember how determined I was, how idealistic, now it’s nothing more than the last threads of smoke from a dying fire.
He has stopped talking and is looking at me. I know that he has just asked me something but for the life of me I don’t know what it is. It’s happening to me more and more as if I am slowly removing myself from the world. I decide to wait for him to repeat what he said.
‘References,’ he says.
I nod. He waits. I nod again.
‘You’re going to need them.’
I shrug. He waits. I shrug again.
‘I’ve discussed it with the board…’
He pauses again as if to say would you like to come in at this point. I don’t and won’t.
‘And one or two of the teachers…’
Again he looks to me. This time I neither nod nor shrug.
‘This, you understand, is tricky. Because what’s not in doubt is that you are a very capable teacher. But we feel – and this was unanimous – that we cannot recommend you to another post until you sort out your problems. Your issues. Drinking, etcetera.’
At this point I stand. I look at him and smile. I feel sorry for him in his plush wing-backed leather chair with his receding hairline and his head full of manners and dos and don’ts. I look through the window at the fields, at the trees moving slowly in the breeze. I pick up my briefcase and on the way out of the room I spit on the floor. As I walk down the corridor leading to the exit I meet Farrell. I can tell that he knows, and as he approaches I can see him debate whether to stop and say something. When I reach him he holds out his hand. I look at it but don’t take it. Then I stare him in the eye.
‘I fucked your daughter, Mr Farrell. She was sweet. Sweet and willing.’
Memory Down
She stands before me with that look in her eye, the one that I know so well, a hard, tight look that a fighter has before he takes or gives the next blow. I see the way she fills the doorway positioning her body so that I can’t squeeze through. I smell the scent of our house, the familiar warmth of breakfast cooked, and coffee brewing. I look for my son, for the bustle of his shape, but he is nowhere to be seen.
‘Can I come in?
‘No.’
Her voice is hard and pointed like a trowel hitting brick.
‘Please.’
‘No.’
I hate myself for begging; detest the small boy I hear in my voice. I feel like a whipped dog left in the rain with nothing but the hunger in its stomach for comfort.
‘You can’t do this.’
‘I can and I am.’
She sounds so flat as if she had been programmed, her words are robotic and without feeling.
‘I love you.’
Nothing, not even the flicker of her eyes to let me know that she heard me. I pull my hand across my face, and think about lighting a cigarette, but then remember I don’t have any. I look at the ground and then at the backs of my hands, for the first time I see the rasp of bruising and drying blood across the knuckles. I stare at them in disbelief, my mind scouring the events of the last twenty-four hours, frantically chasing down what has caused the blush of blood on my hands. She is watching me; there is something in her eyes that makes me stop for a moment.
‘You don’t remember, do you?’
She makes a gesture at the garden behind me; I turn and see the mounds of earth spewed across the grass and the broken flowers torn from their beds, their heads snapped and limp, barely attached to their stalks. The hedge has a body-shaped hole in it; leaves lie spattered on the pavement like discarded paper.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Think, Gabriel. Have a long good think.’
‘God…’
‘You haven’t a fucking clue, have you?’
‘What?’
She gently moves aside so I can see down into the hall; it takes me a while to get used to the darkness, then I see the smashed chair lying on its side, and the coat stand broken in half like it was a matchstick. I move forward to take a closer look, she backs away, there is fear in her eyes. Just behind the door I see two large dents in the plaster of the wall, two fistsized depressions.
‘Fuck.’
She rolls up the long sleeves of her T-shirt and reveals two large bruises on the tops of her arms, two hand-sized grips. I can see the line of the fingers marked in an angry, accusing shade of purple.
‘Usually I can manage, you know, when you take it out on me. I tell myself that it will pass like a storm and that you will blow yourself out. You were told the last time, when you were admitted to hospital, that you have to get help. On your own.’
She stops speaking to gather herself, to halt the tears that rise in her. I want to take her in my arms. I gently move towards her.
‘Don�
��t. Don’t you fucking dare.’
‘Please.’
‘Your son saw everything. Every bloody thing you did. He saw you for who you really are, Gabriel. He wants nothing to do with you. Do you understand? Nothing.’
‘I can’t remember. I can’t fucking remember. I swear to Christ.’
‘It doesn’t matter, do you understand? None of it. Not the excuses. Not the promises. It’s all gone. You are dead…dead. And you don’t see it, do you?’
‘Oh God.’
‘The police were here again, Gabriel. I thought you were going to kill me. You were ranting and raving about…’
‘About?’
‘Being fired.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s not my fault you were fired, is it?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of a man does this? Tell me. What sort of man does your son see when he looks at you? Do you ever stop to think?’
‘What happened?’
‘You banged me up against the wall. You had me by the tops of my arms. You were shouting. I swear to God there was foam at the corners of your mouth. You were fucking monstrous. Eventually I got away from you and ran into the bedroom and called the police. They put me on to a lady while they sent someone round. She asked me to tell her where you were in the house. I crept back into the hall and there you were taking lumps out the wall with your fists. Banging as if it was someone’s head. And John was standing there watching you, tears in his eyes. Jesus, you should have seen yourself. God. When the police came it took them forever. You had undressed and lain on the bed. They took my statement. And then they tried to wake you up. No chance. One of them started laughing. And two of them lifted you by the ankles. You were buck naked. They told me to leave the house. Although they said you would probably be a different animal when you woke up. That’s what they said, a different animal. Buck naked they shook you…’
‘Jesus.’
‘I don’t think that even he could help you now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please, that’s a very overused word as far as you’re concerned. Sorry is not going to fix this. I slept with John last night. Sleep, that’s a joke. I heard you moving around about two or three hours later and then the door going.’
She lowers her head and stays that way for a minute. I see her hand shake as she moves it through her fallen hair. The next thing she says very softly.
‘It’s over, Gabriel. It was over anyway. But any chance…Well there are no more chances. Stay away.’
I hear her close the door behind me as I walk away. I don’t look back because I know that violence still hangs in our doorway like a bird of prey and that it was me who put it there, no-one else but me. I shake my head as I walk down our street. I tell myself to give it time, to get out the way and to stay that way. I will find somewhere to go where I no longer have to think, no longer have to feel. A cold wind blows up.
The first drink tastes of her flesh. It brings her body to the tip of my tongue. I imagine drinking her down, from fingertip to toe, with each sip she is more in me, more completely part of me. I want it to last forever so I take my time.
The second drink tastes of my hatred of her. She is mud and grit; and it slides down my throat like sludge. I want to tear her down, to remove the smug look I saw in her as I stood in my doorway earlier that morning. She’s the cause, the beginning and the end of all my pain.
I look to the third drink to remove both women, to stamp them down. I want the thinking to stop, the tearing and the pulling at the fabric of my sanity to cease.
Halfway through the third drink I gag, I sense the barman looking at me but I force the second half of it down and indicate that I want another. I know that I am heading down into the half-light of drunkenness and I welcome it.
Softer than Love
Moira, the doctor with the blue-grey eyes, is back with me. It is a day or so after my session with the young male nurses and my panic in the holding room. She is sitting with me, this time on a small chair beside my bed. I am glad to see her, and I sense that she is too.
‘I hear you spoke.’
‘Yes.’
‘How did that feel?’
‘Weird.’
‘Yes, I bet it did.’
‘How much longer do I have to be here?’
‘Do you want me to lie?’
‘No.’
‘A while, I’m afraid.’
‘How long is a while?’
‘Think of it in stages. Three or four days ago you wouldn’t speak. And you ended up on the floor of the holding room downstairs screaming for your life. Today you are making polite conversation with a lady you hardly know. I would call that progress, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose.’
‘You were a teacher?’
‘Was…was a teacher. I seem to remember I was fired.’
‘Why?’
‘I think you know as well as I do. I think that it’s all written down in that little red file you carry around with you.’
‘My, you really are back with us, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve never been away. It was the rest of you that went missing.’
Begging for a Fairytale
How often have I stood here, as a child, aching for the future, asking it to come and lift me from the Sunday hours of my young life? Now I want it stopped, this moment forever held. It is in the next second that I know I will decide to get drunk and that I will burn all the promises that I have made. It is two weeks since we buried her and in that time my sister has monitored me, letting me know that the ice I am on is thin and ready at any moment to give way. I have been staying with her and I vowed when our mother died that I would not drink. I have nowhere left to go. My wife didn’t even attend the funeral. She sent a wreath and forbade our son from coming, saying that she couldn’t trust that I would look after him. My brother-in-law Seamus is not pleased with the arrangement, saying that everyone had tried their best with me and that I would only throw their kindness back in their faces as usual. He’s fucked everything up, he said one night as I sat in their living room listening to them both argue in the kitchen.
‘We tried to get him help when he went for his wife that time. We had it set up and the fucker said no.’
‘Quiet,’ my sister said. ‘He’s in the next room.’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s. He has no job, no marriage and now we’re supposed to sit here and wipe his arse for him.’
‘Seamus…He has no-one. He needs us.’
‘So?’
‘So give me time with him. Let me work on him. He’s not drinking. He’s promised us that much.’
‘We’ll see. We’ll bloody well see,’ my brother-in-law said.
I am standing in front of my mother’s house looking at the spot where we found her. I have walked here from the town. I know I am here for a reason, and maybe it is as simple as to say goodbye, not only to my mother but to the others that consider me theirs, my wife, my son, my sister, and my nieces. I stand at the crossroads of a journey I neither asked for nor wanted, and I know that this small voice of reason I hear, telling me to think not only of myself but of others too, will soon be drowned by the flood of my first pint. I suppose I came here to see if he still walks the hillside, if it was safe to return. I am foolish, I know that he will not show himself in daylight, the night is much more his scene.
My sister takes her work seriously. It is her vocation. It lies down with her at night, and informs her dreams. It hovers over her like an angel in need of peace. I love my sister, I feel inadequate beside her. I always have done.
She works as a nurse in a hospice on the far side of town; she eases the path of terminally ill people so that they can pass through the dark gate that lies at the end of their lives. She woos them and places her heart at their disposal, and they smile at her, thankful for her courage. She tells them that she is there and they have no need to be alone. She prays with them and tells them that God is waiting for them. I s
ee us again as children, our hands entwined. We told ourselves that things would be different. We made a pact as we lay in one of the fields at the front of our house. We placed daisies between our palms and clasped our hands together and told each other that the world would be ours.
‘We’ll never be like him.’
‘Never.’
‘We’ll never make anyone cry.’
‘Never.’
‘Promise.’
‘Promise.’
We lay there for hours, ignoring the night chill that rose with the moon. We held each other, facing the world that loomed ahead of us, beckoning us. Her head lay across my chest, her hair spilling across my body like seaweed in a rock pool. I remember her breathing on my neck, her hands tugging at my jacket.
Then something rose between us, it had no name but it was clothed in dark colours. It was a feeling, a black pulse of anger, and it smelled of my father. I remember she shifted a little and a moan came to her lips, one of soft protest. I held her more tightly and shuddered as the world grew narrow. It was the last time she spoke of the wound in her heart, when she told me how he waited until she was nearly asleep before his hands began their unholy game. She told me how the world got smaller and smaller. I felt her body tighten as she began to cry. I betrayed her all those years ago. I knew no better. I slipped my hand onto her breast as we lay there together. Her body froze for a moment and then relaxed a little as my hand moved beneath her T-shirt and explored the softness of her stomach. I was doing what had been done to me. I pulled at her jeans buttons and pushed my hand down between her legs. I remember the feeling of warmth and of wetness, and the need rose in me, the hot desire that overwhelmed every decent thought. She turned her head away from me, as I moved to kiss her on the lips and a sound came from her, one of disappointment. I remember how the night fell as I touched her and I knew that darkness bred moments such as these.
