The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  “I cried again,” she said, “which isn’t like me at all. But I’m just so upside-down. In a nice way though.”

  “Good for you,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. “I’m so glad for you. Couldn’t be happier. Now –”

  “Let me ask you something, Jackie. And I want an honest answer.”

  My finger tapped on my thigh. “What?”

  “Do you think I’m too old to get married in a church?” “No, of course I don’t!”

  “Neither does David. But I do. I mean, look at the cut of me.” She ran her hands through her long grey hair which, in all honesty, could have done with a snip. “One of the wee shites at the end of the street calls me ‘The Witch’.”

  “Well, I presume you’d be getting your hair done for it …”

  “Yeah … Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. Just don’t go to the muppet who did mine. Now –”

  “But it’s not just the hair though, is it? Can you see me in a white dress walking up an aisle? I’m not exactly Cameron Diaz in general, am I?”

  My voice rose. “What is it with you and Cameron Diaz all of a sudden?”

  She groaned. “David fancies her.” “I’m sure he does. So what?”

  “All right, even leaving looks aside – we don’t know all that many people. I’d be surprised if we could rustle up a guest list of more than, what, thirty?”

  “And?”

  “It’s going to look stupid, isn’t it? Thirty people in a big church?”

  “So don’t get a big church. Get a little church.”

  “It’ll have to be very little. We’ll have to get married in a shagging tree-house.”

  “What’s the alternative? A registry office in a health centre? Tripping over sick people on your way to the altar? Oh, excuse me, there wouldn’t be an altar, would there? Tripping over sick people on your to the desk?”

  “Less hassle …” Nancy mumbled.

  “Yeah, less hassle and less special. Get married in a church, for God’s sake. No pun intended.”

  “None taken.”

  “You’ll always regret it if you don’t.”

  She mused for a moment, then broke into a smile. “You’re right. You’re right. Aw, Jackie, what would I do without you?” She leaned in for yet another hug, which, frankly, I cut short.

  “OK then,” I said. “That’s that. Listen –”

  “Then there’s the reception,” Nancy said, biting a fingernail. “That’s a nightmare in itself …”

  I didn’t hear what she said next; I didn’t hear it because of all the blood that was suddenly rushing about in my head.

  It was almost a quarter past six by the time she finished. I knew that because when she finally tapered off, she looked at her watch and said, “Jesus! It’s almost a quarter past six!” “Good God,” I said, just to emphasise that yes indeed, we had been talking about her wedding for the guts of an hour – or rather, she had. I’d contributed precious little, apart from an occasional “Yeah, I agree”, the whole point of which was to hurry things along (it hadn’t worked, obviously).

  “I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “I knew I shouldn’t have started. I’m just so thrilled with the whole thing.”

  “I know. But maybe we could move on now to –” “Of course. Of course. I apologise, really, I do.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll have to be heading back soon, so I’ll try to be –”

  “Hey, listen, I know – why don’t you stay here tonight?” “Well …”

  “Ah, go on. I’ve no groceries in, but I can nip down to the Spar at the corner. I’ll get some wine too, a bit of dessert. You’ll be on the pull-out, mind.”

  “But I’ve got nothing with me, no clothes or –” “It’s only one night, Jackie. You’ll live.”

  “Suppose so. Yeah. Yeah – all right then. I’ll let Melissa know.”

  “Good girl. I’ll do a quick shopping list.” “Put wine at the top.”

  “Will do.”

  She left to get a pen and a notebook. I got my phone out and started texting.

  * * *

  We opened a bottle of Rioja as soon as Nancy got back from the shop. I sat at the kitchen table while she got to work on a spag bol. From past experience I knew that she hated any interference while cooking, so I didn’t offer to help. I just sipped my wine as she chopped and stirred, waiting for her to mention the elephant in the room. But she didn’t. She got back on to the subject of Parisian restaurants and stayed there for quite a while. When that topic had been exhausted, she gave me a detailed analysis of the many difficulties facing the user of Dublin airport. From there, she moved on to vegetarianism – a good thing or not? At that point it became clear to me that I would have to do a little subtle prompting.

  “Nancy!” I said. “For fuck’s sake!” She turned to face me. “What?”

  “I’ve been here for two hours and we haven’t talked about Gerry yet.”

  “I was waiting for you to start,” she said. “I didn’t want to be pushy.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I should have … I’m sorry, I just –”

  “Go on. Tell me. I’m all ears.” She turned back to her pots and pans.

  “Right. Friday morning, I got one of my headaches.” “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. It was pretty bad, so I left work and went home. Gerry was out doing a wedding, I thought. But halfway up the garden path, I looked in through the front window and there he was. With Lisa from next door. Hard at it.”

  I paused, anticipating a response. None materialised. Then Nancy half-turned and said, “I’m listening, go on.”

  “Are you nearly done?” I said. “I’d prefer to talk to your face if at all possible.”

  “Sorry, just a tick, I’m nearly there.” She reached into her fridge and grabbed a tub of parmesan. Then she sprinkled some in (far too much, in my opinion), wiped her hands on a tea-towel and finally took a seat across from me.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “I’m all yours.”

  I glugged the remainder of my wine and poured some more. Nancy had barely started hers.

  “Okay,” I said. “So there they were, over the back of the sofa –”

  “But, Jesus, they must have known they could be seen. What were they thinking of?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. Yet.”

  “What did you do? Did you barge in or run away?”

  “I barged in. Or I started to anyway. But I didn’t even get through the front door before she came tearing out and away up the road.”

  “What about Gerry?”

  “Ran upstairs and puked his socks up.” “No!”

  “Yeah. I went in to the bedroom and packed.” “Did you not even talk to him?”

  “A wee bit. Just to say I was off, basically.” “And have you talked to him since?”

  “A few times. I, eh … I wrecked his jeep …” I trailed off, waiting for her astonished reaction.

  She nodded. “What? Took a hammer to it?”

  I’d expected a scream at least. I struggled to keep my disappointment off my face and out of my voice. “No. Scraped it against a pillar.”

  “Least he deserves, isn’t it? What about the twins? Do they know?”

  “Do they ever! Chrissy says she’s never talking to him again. And she means it. Not only that, she put a brick through Lisa’s window and sloshed a bucket of paint over her car.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Chrissy.”

  “There you go. As for the other eejit, he’s on the front page of The Sun today.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He saw Lisa in a night-club, excuse me, a drinking club, with her boyfriend –”

  “Not Gerry? A different boyfriend?”

  I thought for a moment that this was a shockingly tasteless joke, but no, it was a real question. “Not Gerry,” I said through my teeth. “Her real boyfriend. The point is, Robert went for her, made some sort of smart comment and the boyfriend upped and lamped him.
There was a fight, which Robert seems to have won decisively. Somebody called the paper and there he is: “Soap Star’s Drunken Shame”. He could be in serious trouble with RTÉ. And if anything really bad comes of it, he says he’s never speaking to his dad again either.” I took a swig of wine and slumped in my chair. “It’s such a mess, Nancy.”

  “And what about you?” she said. “How are you coping?” “I was doing all right,” I said, carefully. “Until the kids went crazy. Now … I’m not doing all right. At all.”

  She nodded and had some wine. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s a mess.”

  I waited for her advice. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lower lip, a sure sign that she was thinking hard.

  “Listen,” she said then. “I’m sorry, but I can’t concentrate. I’ve got something on my mind.”

  Every muscle in my body contracted. In an instant, I convinced myself that she was about to make some horrific revelation about Gerry – that she’d caught him at it herself one day. Or that he’d tried it on with her ten minutes after we became neighbours, all those years ago.

  “What is it?” I managed to say.

  “My father’s been dead for twenty years,” she said. “Who should I get to give me away?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Dinner was nice, I had to give her that. What was even nicer, though, was the wine. We ended up getting through two bottles before dessert. I drank way more than my share. Frankly, I needed it. Although we did indeed have the “nice long chat” that Nancy had promised, not a lot of it was about Gerry and the twins. And the parts that were delivered nothing of any significance. Nancy told me how sorry she was, several times, and while she seemed to mean it quite sincerely, her condolences were of no practical help. I kept finding myself frowning at the space above her head, wondering where I’d gone wrong. In the end, I concluded that I hadn’t gone wrong anywhere. A woman who had recently got engaged – even a fifty-two- year-old – was no one’s idea of a great conversationalist, and that was all there was to it. By the time we had decided not to bother with coffee and open bottle number three instead, I was finding it all but funny – which is not to say that I was in good humour. I was troubled by so many different negative emotions that I was having a hard time giving them all names. And being categorically pissed wasn’t helping any.

  During my walk on the beach – technically, during my sit in the car – I had contemplated telling Nancy about me and Tony. I’d decided not to during dinner, but the drunker I got, the harder it became to keep the words down. By the time we had moved back to the sofa, I had resorted to clamping my lips together like a child trying to get out of taking medicine.

  “Is your mouth all right?” Nancy asked as she sat down beside me.

  I nodded. “Toothache?”

  I unclamped. “Nothing. I’m fine.” “Okay. Will I put some music on?” “Sure.”

  She got up – a little unsteadily – and went to her CD rack, which, without being unkind, was mostly filled with albums that had come free with Sunday newspapers. “Christ, I really should get some new stuff. Kenny Rogers? No, wait … eh …”

  “Kenny Rogers will do grand.”

  She put the CD on and returned to the sofa. “I had a friend in New York once, Sally, who was seriously into Kenny Rogers.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Not the music. I mean … sexually. She never shut up about him. Made her husband grow a beard and all. But that didn’t last. He didn’t look like Kenny Rogers, he just looked homeless.”

  “Pity.”

  “She was a really sophisticated woman, very stylish, owned her own business, read high-falutin’ books, went to the opera a lot – opera! All that malarkey. But plain old country Kenny did something for her.”

  I took another wholly unnecessary sip of wine. “Strange.” “It was strange. But there’s no accounting for people and the things they see in one another.” She turned to face me.

  “What do you think Gerry saw in your one?”

  I didn’t think she had told me about Sally and Kenny Rogers because she wanted a jokey prelude to her question about Lisa; that just seemed to suddenly occur to her. Still, I felt slightly cornered.

  “Was it all about her looks?” Nancy prompted when I failed to answer.

  “I haven’t really thought about it.” “Come on, Jackie. You must have done.” “Looks, then,” I mumbled.

  Nothing more was said for a while. Kenny Rogers complained to Lucille about her poor timing.

  “Not that it matters, really,” Nancy said then. “Suppose not.”

  “But you’d like to think it was just looks.” “Would I?”

  “One, I should say. One would like to think it was just looks.” “What makes you say that?”

  “I mean, it’d be a whole other kettle of fish if it was a proper relationship, wouldn’t it? Better if it’s nothing more than … sex.”

  “I never thought it was a proper relationship,” I said. “I believed him from the start on that score.”

  “Yeah. You said. I’m not sure I would have. Not Gerry, don’t get me wrong, that’s up to you. But if I caught David playing away and he swore it was just the once, I’m not sure I’d be all that convinced.”

  I shrugged and put down my glass. The room was starting to spin. Kenny Rogers had moved on from Lucille to Ruby, but he still wasn’t having any luck.

  “Why are you so convinced?” Nancy asked. “Because.”

  “Was it his tone of voice or what?” “Yeah. It was his tone of voice.” “How did he sound? Was he –”

  “Plus … Plus … I think that sort of thing … can happen.” “What can?”

  “A … one-off. Mistake. A one-off mistake.” “Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You sound like you’ve forgiven him already. Have you?” My confession climbed my throat again. I swallowed it down and faked a smile. “Ah, I’m too sozzled to talk about this now,” I said. “Have you thought about anywhere nice for the honeymoon?”

  * * *

  I awoke next morning to a feeling that I had read about but never personally experienced – complete ignorance regarding my current whereabouts. It was only when I hauled myself up onto my elbows and saw Nancy’s framed Casablanca poster that the answer arrived. I heard the tinkle of spoon against mug coming from the kitchen and realised that I was not alone. Another realisation followed immediately: I had been drunk, seriously, properly plastered for the first time since my arrest. Why now? I scolded myself. Aren’t things complicated enough?

  “Hello?” I called out.

  Nancy appeared in the archway. “Jackie O. You’re alive.”

  I thought it over. It seemed to be the truth. “Barely. What time is it?”

  “Almost eleven. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  I placed a tentative hand against my brow. “Christ … my head.”

  “I’ll get you a Resolve.”

  I sat up properly and tried to reconstruct the evening. The last thing I remembered even semi-clearly was listening to Kenny Rogers. But that had been quite early.

  “What time did I go to bed?” I called, greatly resenting having to raise my voice.

  Nancy came back into the room bearing a glass, whose contents I swallowed in two noisy gulps. It tasted like fizzy bleach, but I didn’t care. There was water in there somewhere and that was the main thing.

  “Take a guess,” Nancy said. “Dunno. One? Two?”

  “You flatter yourself.” “Earlier? Midnight?” “Half past ten.” “What? No way!”

  “Half past ten. And you didn’t ‘go to bed’, you conked out. I had to get the pull-out fixed up round you, which was no mean task, I might add.”

  “Jesus. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I needed the early night myself.”

  A horrible thought occurred to me. “Um … I was talking complete rubbish, I suppose, was I?”

  She wobbled her hand back and forth. “I’ve heard you in be
tter form, let’s put it like that.”

  “Right. Did I say anything really embarrassing?” “Yes.”

  My toes curled. “What?”

  “You said we should go to Sligo for our honeymoon because that’s where you and Gerry went and you had a great time. I reminded you about six times that I’m from Sligo, but you didn’t seem to hear me.”

  “Oh. Anything else?”

  “You talked about Robert a lot. Gave out about him a lot, I mean. Nothing new there.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Listen, Jackie … I want to apologise.”

  “For?”

  “For going on and on about David and the wedding.” “Oh. It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not. You came over here for support and I let you down. But it was such a shock …”

  I shook my head, a move that I instantly regretted. “Forget about it.”

  “OK. If you’re sure. Now – do you want to go for a walk or something? Bit of fresh air.”

  “No. Thanks. I should really get back over to Melissa’s.” “Oh. Okay. Whatever you like. But have a bit of tea and toast first. It might help.” “Thanks.”

  She retreated into the kitchen. I began the long and difficult task of getting off the floor.

  Tea and toast and fizzy bleach notwithstanding, my hangover worsened during the drive back to Ranelagh. My visit to Nancy’s started to seem like an episode with brackets around it; mentally, I was now back in the Baggot Street coffee shop, feeling stunned and panicked and miserable. I checked my phone along the way, but there were no missed calls from Robert. None from Chrissy, for that matter. Gerry had called three times.