by Alex Coleman
Jonathon came home from hospital next day. He had his party. I attended, with Gerry, who gave me a hard time throughout – after all the effort I’d put in, you’d think I’d be a bit cheerier now that the boy was home. Tony made a little speech. He singled me out for thanks and everyone applauded. I did a little bow and said it was nothing really – the real hero was Jonathon, who’d been so brave, so uncomplaining. The attention was deflected and stayed deflected. Tony and I had no time alone at the party; we were never alone again, in fact. I think that was deliberate, on both our parts. A few months after Jonathon came home, Tony called to our house one night and told us he had some news. A job had come up in the bank. It would be a sideways move, really, but he liked the sound of it and he felt he needed a new start. In short, he was off to Galway within a matter of weeks. And that was that. Our infidelity was just like Tony’s suicide threat. It happened, but was never acknowledged afterwards. Despite promises to the contrary, he never made contact once he’d moved away. The house went up for sale and was bought by a man from Westmeath, who had a dozen more just like it. He rented it to a friendly Nigerian couple for a few of years, but they quickly established themselves well enough to buy a place of their own. The house went into the papers again and soon attracted new tenants. One was called Paula and one was called Lisa.
It’s a funny old world.
CHAPTER 9
When I woke up on Saturday morning, I found that I had a little movie running constantly in my head – Gerry and Lisa, hard at it. I hadn’t given the act itself a great deal of thought up to that point, but now it was everywhere I looked (especially on the inside of my eyelids). Worse still, my mental movie was shockingly vivid. I could see every detail, from every angle. I could hear everything too, the groans and slurps, the coos and rustles. When I emerged from Melissa’s super-duper shower (which almost knocked me off my feet), I sat on the edge of bed and waited for the tears to come. They didn’t. Every time I began to get upset, a new movie started up, one with similar themes but different characters; I had a starring role.
It wasn’t long before I gave up and went downstairs.
I found Melissa alone in the kitchen, drinking coffee and flipping through a magazine.
“Morning,” I said.
She glanced in my direction. “Hi. Just brewed up. What would you like for breakfast?”
“I’m not really hungry. I’ll get a cup of –” “I’ll get it.”
“No, you stay where you are, I’ll do it.” “Are you –”
“Sit, sit.”
I got the coffee and took a stool across the island from hers. “How did you sleep?” she asked after a moment.
“Not very well. But okay, considering. I got a few hours.” I could tell that she hadn’t really listened to my answer. She pushed the magazine away and drew a deep breath.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said. “About last night.” “Oh. Right. Well, I’m sorry too.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, Jackie. You came here after what, I’m sure, must have been one of the worst experiences of your life and I let you down.”
“No, you were –”
“I should have been more sensitive. I should have just listened. ‘Relieved’ – Jesus. I can’t believe I said that. I … apologise.”
The word seemed to stick in her throat a little, but she got it out in the end. I gave my response a moment’s thought. The right thing to say, of course, was that she hadn’t entirely misread the signs, she’d just come up with the wrong explanation, that was all. But I didn’t say the right thing. I said, “Apology accepted” in the most magnanimous tone I could fake on short notice. Melissa nodded and I nodded back.
“Where’s Colm?” I asked, hoping to move the conversation along to other things.
“He took Niall out to Killiney for a tramp along the beach. They’ll be hours.”
“God, it’s years since I was out there. Does he go –”
I was interrupted by the sound of La Cucaracha coming from my mobile; I had a text. The phone was closer to Melissa than me. She slid it across the counter. The message was from Gerry. As usual, it was all caps. It read: CAN I HAVE THE JEEP BACK PLS? I NEED IT!
“Look,” I said and passed the phone back.
Her face tightened as she read. “What do you make of that?” she said.
A thought occurred: I had no chance of making any progress, reconciliation-wise, until Melissa ditched her Jackie’s-not-that-bothered theory. Here was my chance to kill it stone dead.
“His jeep,” I said softly. “That’s all he cares about. His bloody jeep.”
“Don’t get all annoyed,” Melissa said. “It’s not worth it.”
I got off my stool and gritted my teeth. “I’m going to pop out,” I said. “Do you mind? I’ve got something to do.”
“What is it?” she said. “What are you going to do?”
I didn’t answer until I was halfway down the hall. “I’m going to give him most of his jeep back.”
It took me the best part of an hour to fight my way across to First Premier. I ran through a number of possible options as I drove and was satisfied, by the time I swiped my way into the car park, that I had settled on the best of them. I’d expected the place to be deserted on a Saturday, but there were a few cars dotted around the place. Overworked managers of one kind or another, I guessed; I couldn’t imagine that any mere grunts like myself had popped in to enter a little extra data.
I went past my own car and parked in a space by a pillar. Then I got out and walked around for a minute or two, making sure there was no one watching. My breathing had become very shallow and my hands were shaking. Once I was sure that I was alone, I got back into the jeep and started the engine. On a sudden whim, I turned on the radio. Kate Bush was tinkling her way into “Wuthering Heights”, one of my favourites. I stuck the gear into reverse and edged back out of my space. After taking one last look around, I turned the wheel to the right and rolled away – backwards. I was still in reverse. A small groan escaped me. As I moved off again, forwards this time, I found it surprisingly difficult to keep the wheel turned right. The (not very big) part of my brain that dealt with driving was screaming that this was all wrong. But I persisted. The first contact between the side of the jeep and the pillar was so jarring that I immediately stepped on the brake. I took a moment to collect myself and then tried again. The noise was incredible; it sounded like the Titanic going down. When the pillar reached the rear wheel arch, I reversed out of the space and drove into the one to my right. I found it easier to do the passenger side, possibly because it was further away and possibly because I was getting used to being in a vehicle that was very slowly crashing. When I’d finished and straightened the jeep up in its space, I took my hands off the wheel and just sat there, waiting for the end of the song. Kate seemed to stay out on those wild and windy moors for ages, but eventually the time came for me to get out and inspect the damage. The word for it, I realised as I covered my hand with my mouth, was “significant”. I’d imagined a pair of nice clean scrapes, but the thing looked as if it had just been squeezed between two oncoming trucks. I walked around it three times on increasingly wobbly legs. It was going to cost a fortune to fix. But then again, I told myself, that was the whole point. And besides, there was no going back now. What was done was done. I bent down and deposited the keys on the ground inside the right front tyre.
“Jackie?”
I froze. The voice was familiar, but I didn’t immediately attach a face. I got to my feet and turned around. Eddie from the office was standing not twenty feet away. He was looking at me the way you might look at someone who was naked and waving a sword around.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I smiled as broadly as I could, a move which, judging by the way he flinched, alarmed him even more. “I’m fine, Eddie. How, eh … how are you?”
“I’m fine too, thank you. Um … you know you just … had a little accident? Two of them, r
eally.”
I nodded and briefly showed him my palms as if to say, What are you gonna do?
He stepped closer, but not too close. “You’re absolutely sure you’re all right?”
“Oh yes,” I nodded and did the too-broad smile again. My mind raced on ahead of me. There didn’t seem to be anything sensible I could say. I decided to just stand there smiling and nodding until he went away.
“I don’t want to interfere,” Eddie said then. “It’s none of my business …”
I did a bit more nodding.
“But I’ve been here for a while.” He pointed his thumb behind him to the First Premier entrance. “I was in the office and I came down and I, eh … saw you. Having your accidents.”
“How come you’re in work on a Saturday?” I asked. It was a ridiculous thing to say, of course, but I was pleased with how reasonable I managed to make it sound.
Eddie went up on his toes. “Me? I was just …” He half- turned and pointed to the door again. “Y’know.”
Oh-hoh, I thought. He’s up to something. I didn’t particularly care what it was, but I knew an opportunity for diversion when I saw one.
“Sounds very mysterious, Eddie.” I looked at the bag he was carrying over his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you were stealing stationery?”
“Stationery? No! No. I wasn’t stealing stationery. I wasn’t stealing anything.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded with great solemnity, as if I’d just asked him if he was sure he wasn’t a serial killer. “Positive.”
“I see. So you don’t want to tell me what you’re doing here on a Saturday?”
This was a shameful attempt to take advantage of Eddie’s shyness. I thought he would be so disturbed by my probing into his personal affairs that he would back away from the conversation, quite possibly literally. But he didn’t.
He put his chin in the air and said, “What about you? Do you want to tell me why you’re deliberately driving someone else’s car into a pillar?”
“It isn’t someone else’s car,” I lied, pathetically. “It’s my car.” “No, it isn’t,” Eddie said. “That’s your car over there.” He pointed to my Micra. There was a tiny pause during which I considered telling him he was mistaken. I stopped myself just before I made the small leap from pathetic to contemptible. “It’s almost my car, all right? It’s my husband’s, if you must know, so there’s no need to call the cops or anything.”
“I wasn’t going to call the cops.” “Good.”
He looked at me with both eyebrows raised, waiting for more information. When I stayed quiet, he flat out asked me for it. It was unlike Eddie to be so bold and I could tell that it took a lot out of him.
“How come you’re wrecking your husband’s car?” he said, then exhaled at length.
I thought, To foster good relations with my sister, why do you think? “I’d prefer not to get into it.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
He capitulated so easily that I felt obliged to throw him a bone. “He upset me, that’s all. Badly.”
“Oh. It must have been something pretty serious.” “Yup. It was.”
“Don’t tell me you caught him kissing another woman …” This, I could tell, was an attempt to add some levity. But I was unable to keep my expression neutral.
“Oh no!” Eddie said, eyes bulging. “No! He kissed someone else!”
Kissed? I thought. What planet was he on? “Eddie, please, I really don’t –”
“But how could he? How could he do that to you?” “Eddie –”
“That’s disgraceful! Really, that’s beyond – Are you all right? Stupid question, good man, Eddie, of course you’re not all right.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, you’re out wrecking cars. Which is understandable! You’ve had a terrible blow. God love you. It’s just … I don’t know …”
He was as exercised as I’d ever seen him. I felt like I was the one who should be doing the comforting.
“How did you find out?” he asked and then immediately raised a hand. “No, sorry. Don’t answer that. I should mind my own. Nothing to do with me.”
“Do you really want to know?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question, just something to say. Eddie took it seriously. He rubbed a finger across his chin, deep in thought. “Yes,” he said, after an age. “Yes, I do want to know.”
I went back on my heels. “Oh. You do.”
“If you want to tell me, I mean. It’s up to you. But I’m a very good listener. I’ve had a lot of compliments on my listening. Well, a few …”
I thought about it. Eddie was virtually a stranger. There was nothing to be gained by telling him, it seemed. But I felt a strong compulsion to justify my actions.
“All right then,” I said. “When I went home from work yesterday –”
“Oh! I meant to ask. How is your headache? Jenny told me about it. Are you okay now?” He looked genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine now,” I said. “When I went –”
“My cousin gets migraines. She has to sit in the dark all day with –”
“Eddie! Jesus! Do you want to hear this or not?” “Sorry. Sorry. Tell me.”
“When I arrived home yesterday I caught my husband …” I hesitated.
“Caught him doing what?” he asked softly.
I stared at him. “Can’t you finish the thought on your own?” I croaked.
“Kissing another woman?”
“No, not kissing another woman. Screwing one.” “Sex,” he nodded ruefully.
“Yes, Eddie, sex. In my own front room.”
“Jesus. You’d think he would have at least gone to a hotel or round to her place.”
I began to think that Eddie’s reputation as a listener was ill-deserved. “Yeah, you’d think that all right. But they didn’t bother.”
He became lost in thought again. “How are you supposed to just sit there in future watching the telly or doing a Sudoku? Knowing that’s the very room –”
“All right, Eddie, that’s enough.”
“Sorry, sorry. Do you know her, this fancy-woman?” “This what?”
“Fancy-woman.”
“I heard you, I just … Yes, I know her. A little bit. She’s our next-door neighbour.”
This last nugget of information was too much for him. He put one hand on his hip and shook his head as if he’d never heard anything quite so shocking in his life. And maybe he hadn’t. We stood there for a moment in silence.
Then Eddie said, “What are you going to do?” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“But you’re definitely leaving him, aren’t you?” “Christ, Eddie, I haven’t really thought about it.”
A look of pure confusion overran his face. “But … he took a vow.”
I reached into my bag for my cigarettes. “Sorry?”
“When you got married. He took a solemn vow not to, you know …” He made a gesture that I couldn’t decipher. “You know … not to go around … having sexual … with your neighbours.”
We both did, I thought, as I struck up the lighter. “That’s true, Eddie. But marriage is complicated.”
He looked me right in the eye. “No, it isn’t,” he said. And I just lost it.
CHAPTER 10
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting at the table by the window in Franco’s, the tiny café across the road from First Premier. As soon as it became clear that I wasn’t going to stop crying any time soon, Eddie had more or less dragged me along there. Anybody else might have thought that privacy was the order of the day, but not Eddie. He insisted that “a nice cup of tea” was the only thing that could sort me out. He must have said it half a dozen times. And it was never “tea” or “a cup of tea”, always “a nice cup of tea”. I failed to see the benefit at the time but had to admit that my tears dried up as soon as I sat down on the ancient, creaky chair. The tea itself seemed incidental to the cure, but I was glad of that too.
“D
o you know how many cups of tea my mother used to drink in a day?” Eddie asked once we were settled.
I shook my head. “Have a guess,” he said. “I haven’t got a clue.”
“If you had to guess, though.” “Twenty.”
He looked crestfallen. “Oh. Yes. That’s right. Twenty.” “Sorry,” I said. “I should have started with a small number and worked my way up. Kinda ruined your story.”
His face brightened. “It was hardly a story. Yeah. Twenty cups of tea a day. I mean, that’s an average. She didn’t keep count or anything. Still – twenty! She was never off the toilet.”
I trekked back through my recent memories and wondered how my decision to wreck my husband’s car had led me to this, listening to a grown man telling me how often his mother urinated.
“Understandable,” I said and hoped the subject was closed. “My father was a different kettle of fish, now. You couldn’t have got a cup of tea down that man’s neck if your life depended on it.”
“A coffee drinker,” I sighed.
“No. Ribena. Gallons of it. His teeth were always purple.”
I groped around for a sensible response. Eventually I came up with: “Ribena’s nice.”
“It’s all right,” Eddie allowed.
“Are your parents still alive?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. Dead as dodos, the pair of them. My mother died ages ago. 1983. Dad died in 1999. Which was a pity, because he was really looking forward to the millennium.”
