The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  She rounded on me. “Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t do it for you?”

  So much for the initiative, I thought. “What do you mean? What did you do it for then?”

  “I did it for me,” she said and flopped down on the sofa. “And you know what? I feel better for it.”

  The wind left my sails. I did a quick lap of the room, then sat down beside her. “Better how? Explain it to me.”

  “Just … better. I’ve done something.” “Smashed a window and wrecked a car . . .” “You can talk.”

  “I wrecked your father’s car,” I said. “That’s different.” It would have been a reasonably pathetic contribution if I’d ended it right there. Sadly, I puffed myself up and added, “Furthermore, I didn’t smash any windows.” In fairness to Chrissy, she didn’t go to town on me. On the other hand, she didn’t need to. “When did you decide to do it?” I asked then, hoping to move things along. “It wasn’t when you were talking to me, was it?”

  She looked genuinely lost. “What?”

  “On Sunday, in the café. I said something about breaking a window. I said it would do no good, but I did … mention it. I was afraid that was what gave you the idea.”

  “No! God, no. I don’t even remember you saying that. I wasn’t thinking straight on Sunday.” She paused for a moment. “And I’m sorry I said … you know. I’m sorry I wasn’t a bit more … sensitive.”

  I sighed and patted her knee. “That’s all right. I’m sorry I walked out on you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s been a tough few days for all of us.” “Yeah.”

  “Yeah …”

  It was going fairly well at that point, I thought. I should have got up and left it at that, even though I’d only been in the room for two minutes. Instead, I did a bit of basking in the moment. That was when Gerry knocked on the door again.

  “Let me in, Chrissy,” he whimpered. “Please … please …” He sounded pathetic. I’d never heard him sounding pathetic before. I didn’t care for it. Chrissy reacted to his intervention by jumping to her feet and pointing an accusing finger at me. “You said he’d gone!” she snarled. “He did go. But he obviously didn’t go very far.”

  “Please!” Gerry begged. “Please let me in.” He knocked again, which made him sound even more wretched.

  “Let him in, Chrissy,” I said. “This is stupid.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “How can you be on his side in anything? I’m starting to worry about you, Mum, I really am.”

  I got to my feet. “Chrissy, let him in.”

  She folded her arms, as if that in itself provided another barrier to entry. “No. I will not.”

  “Right, then I will,” I said and stepped towards the door.

  Chrissy nipped around me and spread herself across it like a goalkeeper facing a penalty.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. “This is my private property.” “Chrissy, you’re being ridiculous. You’ll have to talk to him at some point.”

  “No,” she insisted. “Never again.” “Please!” Gerry called through the door.

  For a moment, all was silence. We had reached a stand-off. “All right,” I said. “Have it your way. But if you’re not going to let your father in, then I’m leaving.”

  “Fine by me,” she said in a childish tone and stepped aside.

  It had genuinely been my intention to leave, but now that she had left me an open goal, as such, I had a sudden change of heart. Instead of grabbing the handle, I flicked the lock. Gerry started to come in, but Chrissy had other ideas. She turned and put her shoulder to the door, trapping his foot in the frame. He yelped; she pushed harder. I grabbed her then and pulled her away, using more force than I meant to. As Gerry sprang through the door like a man being chased by wolves, she looked at me as if I’d slapped her. In the few minutes since I’d seen him, he seemed to have aged a decade. Even Chrissy was shocked; I could tell. She soon got over it though.

  “Get out, both of you!” she roared, and then she started to cry.

  Frankly, I’d been surprised that she hadn’t started sooner, what with her track record. Still, it wasn’t easy to watch. Gerry moved stiffly towards her, as if his knees were giving him trouble. She danced backwards like Muhammad Ali.

  “I thought you let me in,” he said.

  She drew breath for another roar. This one was even more impressive: “Get! Oouuuttt!”

  I imagined my hair blowing back, like in a cartoon. Gerry collapsed onto the sofa at that point, not because he was trying to gain a territorial foothold, I was sure, but because he was in danger of collapsing onto the ground. He put his hands on the back of his head and then put his head between his knees, in the manner of someone doing his best not to faint.

  “I let you in,” I explained. “Chrissy … wasn’t ready to.” “Mum,” she said then, “I want you to leave. This minute.

  And take shithead with you.” She turned and marched off down the narrow corridor that led from the living room. A door slammed and a bolt slid home. Locking herself in the bathroom had been one of her favourite ploys as a teenager. It was obviously back in her arsenal.

  “Come on, Gerry,” I said. “This is pointless.”

  He spoke without looking up. “Go on. Say ‘I told you so’.” “All right. I told you so.”

  He dragged himself to his feet, still not willing to catch my eye and went out the way he’d come in not sixty seconds earlier. I followed and closed the door behind me.

  “I thought you’d gone,” I said to his back.

  He kept walking; shuffling rather. “I tried to. Only got as far as the front door.”

  “Why did you come back? You knew she wasn’t going to –” “I just couldn’t believe it, that’s all. I just couldn’t believe that my little girl would treat me like that. I believe it now.” We were outside before he turned to face me. Even then, he spoke to my shoulder.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you to come home.”

  I shook my head. “No. There isn’t.”

  He barely reacted. “Thought not. So you’re going back to Melissa’s?”

  “For now, yeah.” “Okay then.”

  He stepped closer and bent down to hug me. I started to back away, then had a change of heart and let him do it. His nose burrowed into my left earhole.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “About everything.” “I know you are.” It was all I could think to say. “I love you, Jackie.”

  “I know you do.”

  He swallowed and his nose burrowed in a little further. Then he ended the hug and backed away, looking at my knees now. “Give me a ring,” he said. “At some stage. When you feel like it again.”

  I nodded, but I’m not sure he even saw me. Then I got into the car and drove away.

  * * *

  Back at Melissa’s, the story didn’t take long to tell. “‘Shithead’ …” she said thoughtfully when I’d finished.

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  I shook my head. “It was the way she said it. She didn’t just cast it out there, like, in a temper. It’s obviously what she thinks of him, what she really thinks of him. She’s deadly serious about cutting him off.”

  “I’m sure she’ll get over it,” Melissa said. “And besides, it’s his problem, not yours. You have to concentrate on getting your own head together.”

  “But what if it had been me? Would she turn away from me too? She would! Of course she would.”

  Melissa shook her head. “You’re being silly.”

  “I asked her as much in town the other day and she wouldn’t give me an answer.”

  There was a pause. Then she shook her head again and said, “You’re being silly” again.

  I found that I didn’t have much to say for the rest of the day. My only contribution at dinner was an occasional smile and, as soon as we had cleared up, I retired to a corner of the living room with a pile of Melissa’s magazines. While sh
e and Colm seemed to understand that I wasn’t in the humour for talking, the point was utterly lost on Niall. He leaned over the side of my armchair as I read and found something to point out on almost every page I turned over. It probably would have been annoying even if his interruptions and observations had been funny or clever, but most of them were along the lines of “Look! A car!” After about ten minutes of it, I began to huff and puff quite audibly, hoping Melissa would take the hint and snatch her son away. She definitely heard me – I saw her glancing over at least twice – but still she failed to intervene. It was something of a relief when my mobile rang at around eight o’clock; I was seriously thinking of putting Niall to bed myself and that might not have gone down at all well.

  The caller was Eddie. I excused myself and took the phone into the kitchen.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him once I was settled on a stool. “Why are you whispering?”

  “I’m in a cubicle.” “You’re in a what?”

  “A cubicle. A … toilet.”

  He whispered the word so delicately that he briefly left me behind; I thought I’d misheard.

  “You’re calling me from a toilet?” I asked when I’d caught up.

  “Yeah.”

  “What, have you got a tummy bug for real now?”

  “No. No – I’m out with Margaret. I called her, did everything you said. It worked. She agreed to see me again.”

  “And … you took her … to a toilet?”

  He groaned and tutted. “I took her to a pub. Which has a toilet. Which I’m in.”

  This was as short-tempered as I’d ever heard him. He was clearly feeling stressed. “Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. What’s up?”

  “Right – I think I’ve made a mistake. With the venue.” “Why? Where are you?”

  “Bright Red.”

  I’d never been there myself but I’d heard the twins talking about it on several occasions.

  “Really? Bright Red? Isn’t that a bit …” The first words that sprang to mind were “cool” and “trendy”. I discarded both on the grounds that Eddie might find them insulting. Still, it wasn’t easy to think of an alternative. “Youthful?” I said eventually.

  “Yes. It is. Half the men in here – half the boys in here aren’t even shaving yet. And the girls! Jackie. You’d want to see the get-ups they have on them. I don’t know where to look. It’s like a stripping club or something.”

  “I don’t see the problem, Eddie. Why don’t you just leave?” “I think Margaret likes it.”

  “Well, stay then,” I sighed. Even though I’d been glad of the interruption, I wasn’t really in the mood for Eddie’s … Eddieness.

  “But I’m not sure she likes it. She’s been making wee cracks about how young and weird everybody else is compared to us. Is she really joking or is she dropping hints, do you think?”

  “Jesus, Eddie, how am I supposed to judge that from here? If I –” At that point, a nearby toilet flushed. I waited for the gurgles to fade. “If I were you,” I went on when relative silence was restored, “I’d throw caution to the wind. Get radical. I mean, really go out on a limb.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Ask her, for God’s sake.”

  There was a pause. “I suppose I could do that. But what if she takes that to mean that I want to go and even though she’s perfectly happy where she is, she thinks she should –” “Eddie! You’re over-thinking it – by a long way. I’m telling you. Just ask her if she wants to stay … or leave. You’d be amazed at what you can achieve using simple human language.”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “I don’t know what the hell made me suggest here in the first place. It just popped into my head. I should have –”

  “Stop right there. Eddie – just get up off the toilet and go back to your date. Ask her if she’s comfortable where she is or would she like to try somewhere else. If she says she wants to move, agree with a smile and go somewhere else. If she says she’s grand where she is, then put the idea behind you and get on with enjoying yourself.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Okay? Got it? Are we done?”

  “But supposing she does want to go on somewhere else? Where do we go?”

  I ground my teeth together and raised my eyes to heaven, determined that I would neither lose my temper nor supply an answer.

  “Oh,” Eddie said then. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say I should just ask her where she’d like to go.”

  “Plink!”

  “Sorry? What was that?”

  “That was the sound of a penny dropping. Goodnight, Eddie. And good luck.”

  “Okay, okay. Goodnight. And thanks.”

  We hung up and I went back into the front room.

  Colm had gone, at last, to put Niall to bed. I told Melissa that the caller was a work colleague enquiring after my health. Really, I had no good reason to skirt the truth.

  It was becoming a habit, I guessed.

  I went up to my room quite early. I’d found the day exhausting and was looking forward to being horizontal, if not sound asleep, by eleven. In the end, I managed neither. I’d just kicked off my shoes and was halfway out of my jeans when my phone rang again. When I saw that the caller was Eddie, I seriously considered letting it ring out. Supposing his relationship with Margaret lasted for weeks or months? Would he still be calling me for advice every couple of hours? Despite my doubts, sheer nosiness quickly got the better of me and I picked up.

  “Edward. What can I do for you now?”

  “Jackie, I’m really sorry to be calling again. You must be sick of the sight of me. Sound of me.”

  “That’s okay. What’s up now? Are you in a toilet again?” “Yes. In Hegarty’s.”

  I’d been joking; I should have known better. “So you moved venue.”

  “Yes. She wanted to. You were right – thanks. I just asked her and it was no big deal.”

  “Told you s–”

  “But once we got settled in here, we got into a proper conversation – more relaxed, you know, not just small talk.”

  “Right. That’s a good thing, surely?”

  “Ish. She asked me about my … past. Girlfriend-wise.” “Oh.”

  “I didn’t know what to say, so I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Yeah, it was fair enough for a while – about thirty seconds. Then she got all intrigued. Curious. She wanted to know if I’d had a ‘bad experience’. She kept saying that over and over again. It must be a phrase that women use, is it?”

  Not for the first time, I longed to know what it must be like to be inside his head, looking out.

  “‘A phrase that women use’? Eddie! We don’t have little sayings of our own that you don’t know about. She was just showing an interest.”

  “Well, whatever. I panicked, Jackie. I panicked and I told her I’d had a serious girlfriend for ages. Lynette. Lynette, for God’s sake! I don’t know where I got that from. Anyway – me and this Lynette were mad about each other. Planned to get married, the whole works. But it all came to an end last year.”

  “How?”

  “That’s where I got stuck. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. So I said I was too upset to talk about it and ran off to the jacks again.”

  “I see.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So what am I going to say? I could have Lynette getting cancer or something but that seems a bit morbid. Then again, I can’t just say I dumped her because I’m after spending ten minutes going on about how great she was, funny and nice and kind to animals, all that. And I certainly can’t say she dumped me. What kind of an ad would that be? Maybe if –”

  “All right, Eddie, stop right there. You don’t have to do anything. Just leave it. The way things sit now, she thinks you’ve got a tragic, mysterious past. That’s brilliant. Women love a tragic, mysterious past.”

  “Do they?”


  “Of course!”

  “Well, even if they do, they don’t like being lied to, do they? It’s bound to come out … some day.”

  “Look … don’t take this the wrong way, Eddie, but this is your first date. There might not be a ‘some day’. And if there is, worry about it then. In the meantime, you’re not on trial. You’re not under oath. Relax.”

  He breathed down the line. “Okay. Relax. Relax. Relax. I just don’t like lying, that’s all.”

  “No one does,” I said with a small cough. “Now go back in and clam right up. No more talking about Lynette. Just refuse. And remember, the less you say, the more tragic and mysterious you’ll look.”

  “Right. Okay. Right. Thanks again, Jackie. Where would I be without you?”

  “Look where you are with me,” I sighed. “A pub toilet.” We said goodnight.

  CHAPTER 18

  I barely slept at all on Tuesday night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Chrissy’s pinched-up face, spitting venom at her father. I tried to tell myself that he deserved it, of course, but I couldn’t make the thought stick. It was just after seven when I finally woke up for good. I lay there staring at the ceiling and eventually heard the others get themselves ready for the day. Colm left at about eight, at which point Niall decided he would give a little performance. Although his repertoire was limited to just one number – if it had had a name, it would have been “Lar Lar Lar” – he compensated by singing it at full volume. Every so often, I heard Melissa asking him to keep it down, but to no avail. I knew I should just get out of bed; the noise would (presumably) be less annoying once I was up and about. But I felt too leaden to move. I stayed put until almost ten o’clock, growing more and more irritated by the minute. By the time I finally roused myself and sloped off to the shower, I was frowning so hard that my forehead was beginning to ache.

  Back in the bedroom, I found that I had trouble choosing what to wear. I didn’t have many of my clothes with me and the ones I had suddenly seemed drab and threadbare. After much huffing and puffing, I threw on a pair of jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. When I looked in the mirror, I felt a surge of dread so powerful that my legs wobbled and I had to sit down for a minute. I rested my elbows on my knees and tried to breathe deeply, through my nose.