Come a Little Closer

by Karen Perry

  ‘You got everything?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ she asks Jake, as he shuts the driver’s door. The muscles of his face look stretched and tight.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ He buckles his seatbelt. In the back, Matthew does the same.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Let’s just get home and eat.’

  He starts the engine, rolls the windows fully down. Hot air buffets the back of Leah’s head, and as the car pulls away, one of the boys who has been circling on his bike tosses a can at the vehicle. They feel the metallic clink of the impact and Jake sticks his head out of the window. ‘Get fucked, you little prick!’

  And then he draws his head back in through the window, slams his foot on the accelerator – Leah’s hands grip the seat beneath her – and the car roars away.

  She waits until they are home, lunch finished, the dishes put away, before she asks him.

  ‘Did something happen?’ They are in Matthew’s bedroom where Jake is painting the walls a bright green. Leah has brought in pints of iced water, and she holds hers against her cheek. ‘With Jenna,’ she nudges him. ‘You seemed tense afterwards.’

  He drains his glass, puts it on the floor next to him, says nothing.

  Sometimes Leah finds it hard to navigate Jake’s moods. When they had first met, he seemed exuberant, permanently riding along on a wave of optimism. But in these past weeks, since they have moved in together, she has noticed a change in him. A circumspection, a pensive dissociation, that she finds difficult to penetrate.

  After a moment, he puts the paint-roller down on the tray, sighs and raises his face to meet her gaze. Something troubled and wary lies behind his expression.

  ‘She wants to move back to Aberdeen, to her parents. She says she’s going to take Matthew with her.’

  He scratches his head, and she feels a surge of protective love go through her at his obvious distress and confusion. She wants to go to him, offer comfort and reassurance, but anxiety holds her back. That side of his life is threaded with complications, too delicate and strained for her to pull at. Whenever Leah broaches the subject of Jenna, which is not often, she feels the enormous distance opening between her and Jake. An insurmountable wall.

  ‘Is she serious?’

  He shrugs in response, not meeting her eye.

  ‘Why does she want to leave?’

  ‘Come on. You’ve seen where they live. Would you want to raise your kid there?’ He catches her eye now and there’s something dry in his look, hardness in his words, that makes her draw back a little.

  ‘Those little shits on their bikes, like a pack of fucking baby wolves. Another couple of years and they’re the kids he’s going to be hanging out with. These are the gangs he’ll be joining. And school’s no better. The same mindless thugs. The same slack-jawed indifference to anything as nerdy as education. If he stays there, he doesn’t stand a chance.’

  He picks up his paint-roller to resume his labour, then changes his mind. Half-heartedly, he tells her: ‘If she takes him to Aberdeen, he’ll have a decent home with her parents, some stability, go to a good school.’

  She considers this for a moment, weighing her words carefully. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I’d visit, of course. Jenna says I could come whenever I want, stay with them and her folks,’ he says unhappily. Adding, without much conviction: ‘And with technology, I guess it’s easier now than it was. We can FaceTime, or whatever.’

  ‘I suppose it’s worth considering as an option,’ she says.

  In response, he throws down the roller, paint splattering in the tray. ‘An option! Yeah. Long-distance parenting. Watching him grow up through a computer screen. Seeing him in the flesh once a month, if I’m lucky. And what happens when this baby comes?’ He gestures towards her belly, a quick swatting motion that alarms her, her hand moving instinctively to her tummy. A warning starts in her head. ‘Am I just going to shuttle between two countries to see my kids? Jesus!’

  He hangs his head, puts a hand to his hair, flattening it forward over his brow, a nervous tic that she’s noticed whenever he gets deeply agitated. She can tell somehow that he’s on the brink of a decision that does not include her but will affect the course of her life and the baby’s. Jake and Jenna are committed parents. But it’s a commitment that excludes her, a claim on Jake’s heart that she cannot be a part of.

  Perhaps he reads her thoughts for he bites his lip and brings his eyes up to hers. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’

  She doesn’t respond, just waits, needing something more from him than that.

  ‘I just feel like I failed them, you know?’ He gives her a quick searching gaze, then looks away again. ‘If only there were a way to keep them here. If I could just earn some decent money, I could help out a bit more financially, so they could move somewhere better. It makes me feel so guilty that you and I are living out here while they’re stuck in that fucking ghetto.’

  In her head she does silent calculations while the unease grows in her chest. Money is tight enough with the rent, and she has recently started thinking about ways they might save, hoping that someday they’ll be in a position to buy a place of their own. There will be crèche fees further down the road, unforeseen childcare costs. She can’t see where the money is going to come from, with Jake’s working life so precarious.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ she says. ‘We’ll find a way to make things work.’

  He turns his attention back to the walls, the uneven spread of green. The inadequacy of her response has disappointed him. She wants to comfort and reassure him but doesn’t know how.

  ‘And, anyway,’ she goes on, pushing forward optimistically, ‘once Ian gets the green light for the show, you guys can start filming, and then things will change. You won’t look back.’

  He puts down the paint-roller, leans back on his haunches. ‘I spoke to Ian,’ he says quietly. ‘He got the green light.’

  ‘But that’s terrific!’ she cries, confused by the look that comes over him now. Instead of appearing happy about it, he seems sheepish, almost guilty.

  ‘I didn’t get the part,’ he tells her.

  ‘What? But you and Ian agreed –’

  ‘I know. But they said they needed a big name or it wouldn’t fly. Ian fought for me, but they had him over a barrel.’

  ‘Oh, Jake.’

  He shrugs. A rush of anger goes through her, a sharp, needling intuition: how hard did Ian really fight?

  ‘He said I could try out for one of the small parts, but I said no.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because it would be humiliating!’ he cries, roused to anger. ‘Everyone knows that part was meant for me!’

  ‘Why don’t you think it over? Talk to Ian –’

  ‘No chance.’ And then it comes out – the row they’d had. How he’d told Ian to go fuck himself. Bridges burnt. No going back.

  She listens to all this, and feels a kernel of anger inside her. This side of him is new to her: the loss of temper, the shouting. What he has done is stupid and short-sighted. She wishes he could be a bit more mature.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she tells him, holding back on offering words of comfort, like how there’ll be other parts, other chances. His childishness worries her, his petulance. She needs him to be a grown-up.

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ he replies, quiet and disconsolate.

  A noise above their heads draws his attention – the creak of a pipe, the sound of running water. Jake gets to his feet.

  ‘Where’s Matthew?’ he asks, urgency in his voice.

  He leaves the room and she follows him.

  He’s calling the boy’s name, and distantly, in the garden, she can hear the slam of a ball against a wall.

  ‘Matthew!’ Jake shouts, charging out through the French windows and striding into the grass.

  Leah stays where she is, watching and listening. From the garden, she can hear the boy yelp as
if in pain, Jake’s voice saying: ‘I told you not to come up here. Why don’t you listen to me?’

  Upstairs, there is no sound. The tap has stopped. The pipes are still. She imagines Anton standing at the window directly above her, also watching.

  Jake has the boy by the arm, draws him back to the patio, and she sees him glancing up at the windows of the house, a glance loaded with irritation and suspicion.

  She’d told him about Hilary’s revelation. She’d had to. His response had been predictable. Shock. Outrage. He’d even rung Mark, demanding to know if it was true. She can still hear Jake’s side of that conversation ringing in her ears: ‘I have a kid, Mark! Are you telling me I’m bringing him under the roof of a convicted murderer?’ His anger barely controlled, trying to keep the tone civil.

  Afterwards, he had put his phone down and looked at her uneasily. ‘He claims the guy is innocent. Says it was a wrongful conviction. That the real culprit was an intruder who was never caught.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  Jake had shrugged. ‘He was convicted, wasn’t he? They must have had something on him. But one thing I do know for sure,’ and he had looked out of their bedroom window to the park, where two more tents had joined the first, the ranks of the homeless building in front of them. ‘We can’t do anything about it. It’s not like we can afford to move out. Not in this city.’

  They had left it. And since that phone-call, they haven’t spoken about Anton. But she’s noticed that neither of them goes into the garden now. Their laundry hangs to dry on clothes racks in their bedroom. And whenever there is movement upstairs, the creak of a floorboard, a dry cough, the spill of coins on to the floor, she sees the tension in Jake’s face, the tightening of his jaw.

  He brings his son through into the flat now.

  ‘Why can’t I?’ Matthew demands.

  ‘I’ve told you already. It’s not our garden.’

  The boy flops on to the couch, sweat making his hair stick to his brow, his arms folded tightly over his chest.

  ‘You can play your Nintendo.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Fine. Then sit there and sulk.’

  Jake’s phone beeps, and he seizes it from the counter, reads the screen, still tense from their exchange. Leah goes to the fridge, pours a glass of juice for Matthew, who accepts it from her, mumbling a moody ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Jake tells her.

  ‘What?’

  He mentions the courier company, says some jobs have come up while he hunts around for his bag and helmet. She follows him into the hallway.

  ‘But it’s Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Well, shit, Leah,’ he snaps. ‘We need the money, don’t we?’

  Hurt rises in her chest. Cut by his words, she feels unnerved by a niggling doubt. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, you know,’ she tells him.

  He clips on his helmet. ‘I know.’

  ‘You are happy about the baby, aren’t you?’ she asks.

  His eyes fly across her face. Then he goes to her, instantly remorseful, and puts his arms around her. ‘Of course I’m happy about the baby,’ he murmurs. ‘Don’t ever think otherwise.’

  She stays in his arms for a moment, trying to believe him.

  He draws back and looks into her eyes, strokes her face lightly with his fingertips. ‘We’ll find a way to make all of this work,’ he tells her. ‘I promise.’

  After Jake leaves, she sits on the couch with Matthew. On the table-top in front of them Finding Dory plays on the laptop. In recent days, the little boy has started to relax more around her. He watches the screen with lazy eyes, half leaning against her, tired, while Leah flicks through her phone.

  The browser is still open with the results of her previous search, and now she scrolls through them until she finds an article from the time of Anton’s trial. Opening it, she scans the headline, but her attention is caught by a photograph of Charlotte posted beneath the by-line. A colour picture, it shows a woman whose reddish dark hair is threaded with coppery streaks and carefully done, as if for an occasion. Red lipstick to match the red top she wears, a silver heart on a chain around her neck. She gazes into the camera, clear-eyed beneath slender brows, something distant and vague in the way she smiles. Dreamy. Distracted. Everything Leah knows about this woman she has learnt from Anton, whose account can no longer be trusted.

  What were you like? she wonders, examining the face on the screen. Brown eyes, heavily lashed. How soon after this picture was taken was she killed? And did she have any idea, any inkling at all, of the violence that was coming?

  She was murdered in the kitchen, according to the accounts Leah has read, stabbed to death. Leah cannot imagine Anton doing such a thing, although it is all there in black and white, a conviction and sentence, no appeal. She thinks of the time she has spent with him, the conversations they have had. His presence had felt reassuring, not threatening. She had perceived him to be a kind, lonely man, but more than that, she had felt he understood something about her that she could not easily explain to others.

  ‘Is that you?’ Matthew asks, and she glances down at him.

  He’s peering across her at the picture on her phone.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says, laughing lightly, but he peers more closely and shrugs.

  ‘It looks like you,’ he states, then turns his attention back to the laptop.

  Leah examines the picture now, in a different light. The round curve of Charlotte’s face, the set of her eyes. The long bow of her smile. A jolt goes through her as she realizes the boy is right. That dreamy expression. Viewed from a certain angle, the resemblance is uncanny.

  13

  Hilary

  ‘You look nice,’ Greg says.

  Hilary is just coming in from the garden, her secateurs in one hand, some freshly cut snapdragons in the other. Leah and Jake are due at any minute. She wipes her feet on the mat, then moves to the sink.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, laying down the flowers to fill a vase with water.

  She can feel him looking, knows he is taking note of the silver strappy sandals she is wearing, and her new dress – a sedate navy sundress with pleats in the skirt. More sober than her usual colourful outfits but she has noticed that Leah wears simple monochrome, muted shades, and doesn’t want to appear garish in the young woman’s eyes. At her throat is the necklace Greg had bought for her one Christmas in Weir’s – a silver chain with a little pendant heart. She’d picked it out herself. Charlotte had worn something similar.

  Greg hovers by the doorway, his hands in his pockets. Glancing at him as she strips off her gardening gloves, she notes that he, too, has changed for the occasion. She takes in the pressed navy chinos and crisp white shirt he is wearing with approval.

  For over a year now, Hilary and Greg have occupied separate bedrooms. It was not something discussed or agreed upon, more an arrangement that came about by chance. A winter flu that turned into a prolonged chest infection had kept Greg awake night after night for weeks, hunched forward as coughing racked his lungs. It was his own idea to remove himself from the marital bed and take the spare room at the back. Hilary didn’t object, or suggest he return once his cough had finally disappeared. One afternoon, she had looked in his wardrobe to find it emptied of his possessions and felt a curious finality in the arrangement. A vital change to their marriage executed without a single word spoken on the subject.

  It had pained her a little, but the hurt didn’t run deep and was soon forgotten. It was natural, she supposed, in the course of a long marriage that eventually that side of things would come to an end. There was an honesty about it, and a relief, to acknowledge – tacitly – that their relationship was more companionable than anything else. It didn’t mean she didn’t care about him any longer. She still loved him, in her own way. It was a practical step – and Hilary prides herself on being a practical person. Besides, it will make things easier in the long run. Especially now, with Anton’s return and w
hat that means for all three of them.

  Outside in the garden, the round table is covered with a bright printed cloth and set for four, the Newbridge silverware catching the sunlight, knives shining like cutlasses. She slips the snapdragons into their vase, and turns to take them outdoors, then notes the preoccupied look on Greg’s face.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asks, and his eyes flicker towards her.

  ‘An email from Cormac,’ he says, referring to his publisher. ‘They’ve heard back from RTÉ.’

  ‘Oh?’ she asks hopefully.

  ‘They’ve passed.’

  ‘Oh, Greg.’

  ‘So have TV3. And Newstalk.’

  She puts the vase on the counter and moves towards him. He stands there while she wraps her arms around him, but makes no attempt to take his hands from his pockets and reciprocate the hug.

  ‘That’s it,’ he says softly. ‘Zero publicity.’

  ‘Not zero,’ she corrects him, drawing back so her eyes can scour his face. ‘You’ve that Liffey Sound interview next week.’

  ‘Community radio doesn’t count.’

  ‘And you’ve the short story in the RTÉ Guide.’

  ‘No one reads the stories, Hil. They just get the Guide for the celebrity gossip and the TV listings.’

  ‘That’s not true. And, anyway,’ she says, moving on swiftly, ‘it’s the reviews that count, and you can be damned sure they’ll be good ones. The book is wonderful.’

  His head is tilted to one side, giving her a sad little smile. ‘You’re very loyal, Hil,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  She feels a short stabbing pain in her chest, disturbed by this remark and all the layers within it. She rubs his arm briskly and goes back to her flowers. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can carve the ham, if you like.’

  ‘Right-ho,’ he says, in a flat voice, and she carries the vase of flowers out into the garden.

  Greg has mown the lawn and the dog is lying in the shade of the rhododendron. At the back of the garden, the hydrangeas are taking over. The rosebushes look a little ragged and the mini-fuchsia has failed to flower again. She wishes Greg would just submit to her suggestions and get a landscape gardener in to dig it all up and plant it anew. It baffles her that he is dead-set against the notion of getting help in the garden yet grumbles any time she prods him to tidy it up. But that is a dilemma for another day.