Grace After Henry

by Eithne Shortall

  This was the fourth consecutive year our house had been overrun by moths and my mother, who had reactivated her library membership to read up on them, had found her Mastermind subject.

  ‘Well, excuse me, Sarah,’ said Dad, momentarily distracted from the assassination by this slight on his housekeeping skills. Since retiring, Dad had developed two passions: domesticity and celebrity gossip. The week he stopped being a driving instructor, he watched Lindsay Lohan’s trial live on TMZ in its entirety. And he was so worried about her that he took to cleaning to distract himself. ‘If you want to live in a home where you have to wear your winter coat just to go to the bathroom . . .’

  ‘There’s nowhere else I can wear it, now they’ve eaten two big feckin’ holes in the arse of it!’

  ‘And whose fault is that? If you’d just hang it back like I showed you, under the plastic cover, which I got special from the dry cleaner’s, but no, you just throw it wherever you feel—’

  ‘I see him! Arthur! There!’

  ‘Shush!’ admonished Dad, his head cocked like Patch used to before he went deaf and forgot he had ears.

  ‘They can’t hear us, Arthur.’ Mam rolled her eyes, trying to coax me into the conversation. But I was still trying to get my bearings.

  I had relinquished autonomy the moment I arrived back at our flat, drenched with rain and dread, to find two police officers at the front door. ‘Grace McDonnell?’ And I’d known then, not from what they said but how they stood, with their uniform caps in hand, as if they were already at the funeral.

  It was amazing how long you could get away with ignoring everything when you didn’t care about the outcome of anything. Emerging from that apathy in my parents’ house was like coming to in a madhouse.

  ‘Shush!’ Dad adjusted his glasses, his eyes flickering from the middle distance above the telly to the middle distance above my head. ‘I need to concentrate.’

  Mam sent her eyes skywards again. She held her own spectacles up to her face.

  ‘There! Arthur, behind you!’

  ‘He’s not, he is! He’s—sorry, love.’ Dad clambered into my chair, crushing the unopened book that lay on the armrest.

  ‘Get him, Arthur. Go on, get him! Get the bastard.’

  ‘Mam!’

  She shrugged off the uncharacteristic profanity. ‘Just checking you were still with us, pet.’

  ‘And . . . smack!’ Dad peeled his hand off the mint-green wallpaper and presented his palm victoriously. ‘Mess with the McDonnells and you! Get! Squashed!’

  And they both started shrieking, dancing their tribal dance around the rug once again. It was always the strangest things that reminded me how besotted my parents were with each other. They worked so hard to build this life, and they deserved these years to enjoy it together.

  That was the point where I stood, something they weren’t used to seeing me do without coaxing, and declared that it was time I moved on. Aberdeen Street was ready; I’d signed the last papers and the keys were mine to collect when I wanted. Henry’s parents had insisted I follow through on the purchase. They didn’t want the deposit money and his life insurance would help me through the first year of mortgage payments.

  Mam said it was too soon; Dad said I’d be missed and that my eyesight was a vital asset in the war against larvae. But I had to go. Every time I looked at them I wanted to apologise for the new lines on their faces.

  Within a week, we had moved my stuff into the end-ofterrace on Aberdeen Street that I kept referring to as ‘our house’. The only unpacked bag was the plastic one stuffed with coats and scarves that had gotten caught on the spikes of the gate as Dad carried it in. It had burst all over the hallway and, ten days on, I still hadn’t found the energy to pick them up.

  I thought I heard Henry the first night I was in this house. Thinking I saw him was nothing new, every time I went outside I was convinced I clocked him somewhere, but that was the first time I’d heard his voice. I was in the back garden, checking that the door that led from the shed to the laneway was locked. I pulled at the iron bolt to ensure it was solid, and this shot of laughter rang out.

  I recoiled from the lock as if it had burnt my hand. I didn’t move another inch. I swear to God it was Henry’s laugh.

  My heart pounded in my chest and I felt a wave of nausea but I ignored it. I stood, still as a statue, waiting for the sound that would not be repeated. I remained like that until I started to shiver, then reluctantly I went back inside.

  There were days when my only interaction was with the man in the corner shop with the Chinese–Dublin accent who called himself Pat but whose real name was Xin. I bought bread and cheese from him and he sometimes made observations but never asked questions.

  ‘You’re like a vampire,’ he said, handing over the brie and baguette.

  ‘Because I’m pale?’

  ‘Because you only come out at night.’

  But mostly I just sat on the floor in the hallway beside the mound of coats and watched as my phone flashed beside me. I’d been ignoring my mother’s calls for three days now. All she wanted was for me to say, ‘Yes, doing much better this evening.’ And I couldn’t. I considered lying back down on the pile of duffel and denim and wool. There was no end to how much I could sleep.

  The phone stopped ringing and I waited for the single ‘ping’. The screen flashed again: You Have Nine New Voicemails. She only wanted to help, like Dad when he’d offered to buy me a coat rail. Putting into action something he couldn’t put into words. Just like Henry. The white glow faded and the hallway returned to dark. There was no bulb in the light fixture above me and I liked it like that. It reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge roaming around his home in the dark, too stingy to pay for lamps.

  Almost all of what Henry was carrying had been obliterated when the wheel of the articulated lorry returning to Dublin Port after a beet sugar delivery had rolled over him. All that had come back to me was his oil-stained backpack and a bizarrely pristine copy of A Christmas Carol. We read to each other most nights and we’d been reading that when he died. Henry was atrocious at voices but I made him do them anyway. His Bob Cratchit had me rolling around the bed laughing. We read A Christmas Carol every year, but never at Christmas. Too predictable.

  Sitting with my back to the wall and my knees pulled into me, I opened the book to the relevant passage. I angled the page towards the living room so I might have enough light to make out the words.

  ‘Darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it,’ I read aloud to no one, the sound of my own voice making me jump. It had been a while since I’d spoken. ‘But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.’

  Beyond the front door, people were moving: coming home from work, going to the shops, heading out for a run in the park. But I stayed in the hallway. Every other room was filled with bags and boxes; throws and cushions in the sitting room, clothes in our bedroom, books in the study, and mountains of crockery and saucepans in the kitchen. I couldn’t bring myself to unpack any of them. I couldn’t be in the same room as them. So I stayed where I was, in the darkness, right where Henry had left me.

  I would have given anything to have him back: this house, everything in it, a limb, two limbs, my sense of taste. I would have cut off the last two decades of my life. I would have watched a stranger die.

  I would have watched my parents die.

  I dug my nails into my arm until the dents didn’t immediately disappear. The longing and aching were joined by a fresh wave of guilt. I closed my eyes until the nausea passed. But I had started down this path and I couldn’t stop. Even when I opened them I saw it.

  I saw him hurrying along on his bike, worrying that I would be cross with him for being late, and that stupid scarf that I had knitted that he never wanted coming undone. I saw the red wool looping into the spokes of his wheel, going round and round until it pulled him under the truck. I heard a decisive crunch as
his bones were turned to dust and the squelch like a welly coming away from marsh as his insides flattened. But mainly I saw the red, spinning round, over and over, an indistinguishable mix of scarf and blood and eviscerated organs.

  ‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’

  The responding silence echoed around the hallway and throbbed in my ears.

  ‘Why didn’t you slow down? Hmm? Why couldn’t you just do that?’

  I remembered the last time I saw him: he was heading out the door of our flat, his big smiling head asking what the weather was supposed to be like and me saying it’d be windy and— No. No. No. No. I couldn’t finish that thought.

  ‘Henry! I’m talking to you. H—’

  I choked on his name. I missed his arms and his smell and his existence. It filled me with rage how he never responded and that made my throat ache more.

  ‘I’m sorry, okay?’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Henry!’

  It was not a statement, but a plea. And I flinched at the desperation in my voice. Nobody had ever been coaxed back from the dead by a whinge and a nag.

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  But there was only the confirmation of night. The buzz and click and finally light as the street lamp at the end of Aberdeen Street illuminated. My phone flashed again and I slid it away. I allowed my body to slump to the side, and though I was sobbing into the hood of a quilted jacket, sleep took no time. I was exhausted. I was gone before the ‘ping’ of my mother’s tenth voicemail.

  TWO

  ‘Grace likes telling this story because she likes telling everyone what a dope I was.’

  ‘Not a dope. More . . . cringeworthy.’

  ‘Great. Much better.’

  ‘We knew each other when we were teenagers. Henry lived in the same estate as a girl I went to school with and I’d met him at house parties. We even kissed once, actually, during a game of truth or dare, although Henry complained that I was the one who’d been given the dare so why did he have to suffer.’

  ‘I did not use the word “suffer”.’

  ‘But then Christmas Eve, a few years ago, we were both in my local. The Back Bar. Henry goes there every Christmas Eve but I’m usually at my granny’s. Only she was in England that year, staying with my uncle. So I go to the pub with Aoife.’

  ‘You met Aoife at Grace’s birthday.’

  ‘Really dark hair, yeah, dead straight. That’s her. She gets it from her mother’s side. So anyway, me and Aoife go into the Back Bar and the place is rammed. But I see Henry at the bar. Half a foot taller than everyone else. And he’s in a big group with Claire Maguire, the girl from school. She was the one who had all the house parties when we were teenagers. So anyway, I go over and me and Aoife are going on about how we haven’t seen Claire in so long and what’s she up to now, but really I’ve got one eye on Henry the whole time. And I can tell he’s looking at me.’

  ‘I was just keeping an eye out for my pint.’

  ‘And this goes on for a while. Claire’s not introducing us and I can’t see how I’m going to get talking to him and the barman is getting ready to ring the bell for last orders so I start to panic. And Aoife can see I’m panicking even though I haven’t had a chance to say anything to her but she knows I liked Henry all those years ago.’

  ‘Best kiss of her adolescence.’

  ‘Slim pickings in the Dublin suburbs more like. Anyway, Aoife suddenly goes: “Johnny Connors! Is that you? Oh my God, Johnny Connors.” And Henry’s like, “Eh, no. Not me.”’

  ‘I do not talk like that.’

  ‘And Aoife says, “Are you sure?” Like, are you sure you are who you are? She was working off the cuff. Anyway, he says, “No, wrong guy.”’

  ‘You’re making me sound like Father Fitzgerald.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘From Father Ted. The boring-voice priest.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Ha. You do sound a bit like him, actually. Anyway, then Aoife goes, “Grace, is this guy not the cut of Johnny Connors?” And I’m thinking, “Who the fuck is Johnny Connors?” But anyway, I just go, “No, that’s Henry Walsh.” But I shouldn’t have remembered his surname. It had been years.’

  ‘The lips don’t forget a kiss like that.’

  ‘I’d clearly been Facebook stalking him. I think you were pretty flattered, Henry, some girl knew your name, made you feel like a big man. Big man in the Back Bar.’

  ‘So, anyway, there you have it; that’s how we met.’

  ‘Hold your horses there, Johnny Connors. That’s not the whole story.’

  ‘Yes, it is. We’ve hogged enough conversation time. Let the people eat.’

  ‘So we get talking anyway but the pub is closing and Henry says he’ll walk me home . . .’

  ‘Are they our main courses?’

  ‘. . . which was about three minutes down the road but grand, I say, “Yeah, great thanks.” We reach the bottom of my street and Henry takes my number and it’s clear we’re supposed to kiss but I don’t want to ’cause I hate feeling like I’m in a film, like I’m just acting out the script, so I start backing up the street towards my house, saying, “See ya round.” And Henry’s there going, “Ehhh . . .”’

  ‘I do not sound like that.’

  ‘. . . clearly trying to think of something to say, so I walk slower and then just as I’m about to turn into my garden, he go—he—he goes—’

  ‘Look at her. The supposed love of my life. Laughing so hard she can’t get the words out.’

  ‘He go— Sorry, hang on, give me a sec . . . Woo! Composure. Okay. I’m turning into my garden and he shouts, in his big Father Fitzgerald voice . . .’

  ‘A new detail. Great.’

  ‘He shouts . . .’

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘Let’s do lunch!’

  ‘You’re almost on the floor, Grace. The waiter’s going to think you’ve choked on something.’

  ‘Let’s do lunch?! What? Who even says that??’

  ‘It’s really not that funny.’

  ‘Did you have your Filofax on you that night or were you going to put the appointment in when you got home?’

  ‘Look how much joy she gets from humiliating me. You all right there, Grace? Can you breathe?’

  ‘Let’s do lunch! Oh God, it’s so good. There I was thinking we were in some cheesy romance film, but apparently Henry thought we were in Wall Street!’

  ‘Her love doth overflow.’

  ‘Did you schedule lunch meetings with all the girls back then, or was it just me?’

  ‘All right, honey. Just breathe. You’re going to pull a muscle.’

  THREE

  ‘Itold you we should have phoned. She’s not going to appreciate us barging in on her.’

  ‘I have been phoning, Arthur, but she doesn’t answer. You’re a soft touch. That girl needs some tough love right now.’

  Ding-dong!

  A split second of discombobulated bliss before the familiar realisation that I was indeed lying alone on a pile of coats. The voices were not dreams. They were real and familiar and less than two feet away.

  ‘She can ignore me all she likes but she can’t keep ignoring reality. She can’t be late for work, not on her first day back, she’s got—’

  ‘We’re three hours early, Sarah. She’s not going to be late for work.’

  ‘Am I the only one who remembers how she looked last time we saw her? She’ll need at least three hours to sort herself out or Health and Safety will have the place shut down before she’s so much as turned on the oven.’

  Ding-dong! Ding-dong!

  ‘Grace!’ I froze as the hinge of the letterbox pushed open. I shifted nearer to the front door so whoever’s eye that was – presumably my mother’s; Dad hasn’t bent over since 1997 – wouldn’t register me. I slid right up until my back was against it. I was basically Tom Cruise in that Mission Impossible scene where he’s trying to avoid the detection sensors.

  ‘Grace? It’s your mother.’
>
  Silence. Then a low mumble from Dad: ‘Because that was really going to make her open it.’

  ‘Shut up, you!’ Mam hissed back.

  ‘You’re leaving finger smudges all over that letterbox.’

  ‘Are you looking for a divorce, Arthur McDonnell?’ The hinges squeaked as Mam pushed it open again. ‘Grace, we thought we’d bring you to work for your first day. Just to make sure you get off okay. And we want to see you, pet. We . . . we miss you.’

  ‘We have some of Henry’s stuff.’ Dad cleared his throat. ‘His parents dropped it over, things he’d left at their house they thought you might like. It’s not much – a few CDs, a girly-looking shirt—’

  There was more furtive whispering, too low for me to hear.

  ‘Sorry. A Topman shirt.’

  I shut my eyes to steady the involuntary lurch of my stomach. I had so few of Henry’s clothes. They had given them all to charity shops in the weeks I was sleepwalking around my parents’ house, lost in a stupor. The hoodie I’d been wearing for three weeks now and a coat that had gotten mixed in with mine were all I had. I took a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet. I opened the door.

  ‘There you are now,’ said Dad brightly, as if I’d been held up in the bathroom and he hadn’t just seen me rise from the floor through the stained glass. ‘You look . . . Well, it’s good to see you!’

  I pulled at the hoodie and felt the greasy bun lobbing at the back of my head. They stepped into the hallway, kissing me on the cheek as they passed. They glanced down at the pile of coats, which betrayed the indent of a body, but said nothing. I didn’t think my mother had it in her to say nothing. So that was what you had to do for your parents to stop passing remarks: have the love of your life die.

  ‘You know you’re back at work today?’ said Mam, her face laden with concern.

  ‘Of course I know. You really don’t need to worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried. I’m relaxed. Amn’t I, Arthur? Relaxed?’

  ‘Oh, your mother is very relaxed.’

  ‘See?’