by Marian Keyes
People rang to offer me new cases but I couldn’t talk to them and I couldn’t call them back and after a few days it had got too late and I knew they’d have decided to use someone else.
I watched an awful lot of television, particularly the news, which I’d never bothered much with before. I was deeply affected by any bad stuff – natural disasters, terrorist outrages – but not in the right way. They made me hopeful.
On the internet depression forums, I could see that everyone else was really distressed by catastrophic events, but they perked me up. My reasoning was that if there was an earthquake in some other country, maybe there could be an earthquake in Ireland, preferably right beneath my feet. I didn’t wish ill on anyone else – I wanted everyone else to live and flourish in happiness – but I wanted to die.
I knew my state of mind wasn’t right, that it was really skewed and wrong and counter-intuitive. It was basic human instinct to try to shield yourself from danger, but instead I wanted to embrace it. Indeed, the only reason I left my flat was in the hope that something terrible would happen to me; despite all those statistics about more accidents happening in the home than anywhere else, I still thought I stood a better chance of being killed while out in the world.
My pills were my most precious commodities. I carried them in my jeans pockets and sometimes I took them out to look at, to fix them with a look of faith. I kept waiting for another eleven o’clock to roll around, so I could take my next antidepressant and move one day nearer to being cured.
Prize of prizes were my sleeping tablets. The day that Dr Waterbury gave in and wrote the prescription I actually cried with relief – well, I think it was relief, but at that point I was crying around the clock so it was hard to be sure – and that night I was able to approach bedtime without the usual dread and four episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In one way, the pill worked – I got knocked out for seven hours – but I woke up with the strange suspicion that I’d been abducted by aliens while I’d slept. Gingerly, I felt my bum. Had I been experimented on? Had I been subjected to the much-famed anal probe?
Chemically induced sleep was better than endless hours of horror-filled wakefulness, but the tablets gave me terrible, vivid, elaborate dreams. Even when I was unconscious I didn’t feel safe. I felt as if I spent each night hurtling up and down roller coasters, while ugly people yelled abuse at me. And every morning I bumped roughly into the world, feeling like I’d travelled a long and gruelling way while I’d been absent from myself.
However, horrible and all as those early days were, there was an innocence to them because at that stage I still had faith that medication could fix me. If I could just hang on for the requisite three weeks, I told myself, the tablets would kick in and I’d be okay. But the three weeks came and went and I felt worse. More frightened, less able to function.
Sometimes, late at night, I got in my car and drove for hours, but twice I burst my front left car tyre because I hit the pavement by mistake. I, who had always been so proud of my driving, was officially a menace on the roads.
I went back to Dr Waterbury and because I’d been spending so much time online I knew more about antidepressants than he did. I could have given you chapter and verse on every pill on the market, all the different families – the tricyclics, the SNRIs, SSRIs, MAOIs.
I proposed that he prescribe a lesser-known tricyclic, one that my internet research indicated might help with my specific symptoms. He had to look it up in a book and he seemed alarmed.
‘The side effects of this one are pretty hefty,’ he said. ‘Rash, delirium, possible hepatitis –’
‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Tinnitus, seizures, can trigger schizophrenia. Really, it’s grand. It doesn’t matter, so long as it works and I stop thinking I’m in a science fiction film.’
‘It really isn’t prescribed much,’ he said. ‘I’ve certainly never prescribed it. How about we try you on Cymbalta? A lot of my patients have had good results with that.’
‘I read about the other one on the internet –’
He muttered something that might have been ‘Bloody internet’.
‘– and a woman on a blog had the same feeling that I do, that she was awake in a nightmare, and the tablets helped.’
He shook his head. ‘Let’s go with the Cymbalta, it’s safer.’
‘If I say yes, will you give me a prescription for more sleeping pills?’
He waited, then said, ‘If you agree to start seeing a counsellor.’
‘Done.’
‘Okay.’
‘Will the Cymbalta take three weeks before it works?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ He wrote some names on a piece of paper. ‘A couple of counsellors I’d recommend.’
I barely glanced at them; I was interested only in the tablets. I took the prescription from him. ‘Three weeks, you say, and then I’ll be okay.’
‘Well …’
But the three weeks passed and I had to go back to him again.
‘I’m worse,’ I said.
‘Did you ring any of those counsellors?’
‘Yes! Yes, of course I did.’ I would have done anything if I’d thought it might help. ‘I went to see one. Antonia Kelly. She’s nice, you know. Sympathetic.’ And she had a lovely car, an Audi TT – black, naturally. I was prepared to put my faith in a woman who had such good taste in cars. ‘I’m going to see her every Tuesday. We’ve agreed. But it’ll take ages; counselling takes ages to work. She told me. Months. Especially because I had a happy childhood.’ Wild-eyed I stared at him. ‘We’ve fuck all to work with!’
‘Surely you must have had some trauma …?’
‘No! I didn’t! I fecking wish I had!’ I forced myself to calm down a little. ‘I promise you, Dr Waterbury, I promise you I’ll work on my issues, even though I don’t have any. And even though I hate the word. But I need something in the short term. Can I have different tablets? Please, can I have the ones I told you about?’
‘Okay. But, like the other ones, it’ll take three weeks before they have any effect.’
‘Oh God,’ I said. I actually moaned. ‘I don’t know if I can last three weeks.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean,’ I said, ‘that if you could translate the badness in my head into physical pain, you’d put a pillow over my face, out of compassion. I mean that if I was a dog, you’d shoot me.’
After a long pause he said, ‘I think you should consider going into someplace for a rest.’
‘Someplace? What do you mean?’
‘Hospital.’
‘For what?’ I didn’t really understand. I was thinking of the time I’d had my appendix out. ‘Do you mean a psychiatric hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘But things aren’t that bad! We just need to find the right tablets! Just give me the bad tablets, the ones that will give me the seizures and schizophrenia and I’ll be grand.’
Reluctantly he wrote a prescription for the tricyclics with all the side effects, and although they did indeed give me a rash and a short-lived (possibly imaginary) case of tinnitus, they didn’t make me feel any better.
That was when I knew I didn’t have whatever was needed to keep on going.
34
Jay Parker and I spent the drive back from Leitrim in total silence. Dispirited doesn’t even start to describe it.
I’d been so sure, so utterly certain that Wayne was as good as found. In fairness, I tended to suffer from monomaniacal thinking – once I got hold of an idea I was like a dog with a bone, I wouldn’t let go of it – and it was hard to process just how wrong I’d been.
Not only had I not found Wayne but I’d also broken into the home of a world icon. Even though Docker didn’t live there, even though he’d never even visited, things could get heavy if he decided to go after me – barring orders and public shaming and rage from his many devoted fans.
I tried to reassure myself that he’d never know it was me. But people like him,
powerful people, can find out anything they want. And then there was the camera above the gate. It probably had a great little film of me.
Oh Christ, the gates. Jay and I had had to depart leaving them wide open because my magic little device, which had so obligingly unlocked them, defiantly refused to close them. Worse still, we’d left Docker’s front door in smithereens. Maybe we should have tried patching the massive hole with cardboard and sticky black tape – if we’d managed by some unlikely chance to lay our hands on cardboard and sticky black tape – but we were so flattened by disappointment that it didn’t even occur to us. Now, halfway back to Dublin, I realized that if the glass wasn’t replaced, the local wildlife would take up residence and overrun the place. The door needed to be fixed, but I couldn’t do it myself. Even if I’d been an expert in glass, I couldn’t go back to Leitrim; it was too spooky.
I needed to tell someone about the door. But who? I’d no number for Docker, no way of getting in contact with him. Maybe I should try to organize a Leitrim glazier to fix it, while hoping to stay anonymous?
When we approached the edges of Dublin, the sun was beginning to light the sky. Docker’s house had been buried so deep in the tiny little boreens in Leitrim that it was now after three in the morning.
I spoke for the first time in hours. ‘Jay, where do you want to be dropped?’
He was leaning his head against his window and didn’t seem to hear me.
‘Jay?’
He turned to me. He looked as depressed as I felt. He was always so upbeat and positive that for a split second I felt sorry for him.
‘Were you asleep?’ I asked.
‘No. Just wondering where the hell he is … I really thought he was down there.’
‘Me too.’ The most terrible weariness washed over me as I realized I’d have to go right back to the drawing board. I’d have to interview the neighbours I hadn’t yet spoken to. I’d have to drive to black-pudding central in Clonakilty to talk to Wayne’s family.
But I’d do it. I’d keep rubbing away at the surface until something appeared. And there were still the reports from the phone and credit card people to come, so it wasn’t all bad. ‘We’ll find him,’ I said.
‘You think?’
‘Sure.’ Well, maybe.
That seemed to cheer him up. ‘You’re great,’ he said. ‘You’re just great. We always made a good team, yourself and myself, Helen.’
‘Ah … no, we didn’t.’ He’d just used up the tiny amount of goodwill I’d briefly and mistakenly entertained towards him. ‘Where do you want to be dropped?’
‘Still living in the same place.’
Suddenly I was very angry with him, for crashing back into my life, for acting like we could resurrect our past intimacy, for assuming that I’d remember everything about him.
With icy politeness, I said, ‘You’ll have to remind me of your address.’
‘What?’ He was startled. ‘You know where I live.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘But you’ve been there a million times.’
‘Any stuff pertaining to you was packed into boxes and stacked away on high shelves in some dusty, inaccessible part of my brain a long time ago.’
That stymied him. I could feel him struggling to speak, but he was caught up in so many emotions that no words would come out. All of a sudden he went sort of dead, like a plug had been pulled. ‘Yeah, grand,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll give you directions.’
By the time we reached his flat, it was four o’clock and the sun was already up. Bloody attention seeker. It was like a child who wants to be in Glee and can’t stop singing and dancing. ‘Look at me! Look at me!’
Jay got out of the car and gave me a grimace of a smile. ‘Say hi to Mammy Walsh when you get home.’
‘Mammy Walsh? I’m going to my boyfriend’s. Remember him? Six foot two? Astonishingly handsome? Well-paid job? Fundamentally decent human being?’
‘Great, knock yourself out. But don’t forget you’re still looking for Wayne.’
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’
‘It’s already tomorrow.’
‘Whatever.’ I hit the accelerator and my car took off with a pleasingly disrespectful-sounding little squeal.
It was as bright as midday. The sun was a merciless white ball in a white sky but the streets were empty. It was as if a bomb had gone off, one that had killed all the people but left the buildings standing. It felt like everyone was dead and I was the only one left alive.
When I saw two young girls lurching home in high heels, I half expected them to chase after my car, snarling and cannibal-like. But they didn’t even look at me; they were concentrating too hard on staying upright.
By some bizarre stroke of good fortune I got a parking space only two streets away from Artie’s.
I let myself into the house and brushed my teeth – I always carried my toothbrush with me, even when I hadn’t just been made homeless. Because of the unpredictable nature of my job, I always carried everything with me: my make-up, my phone charger, even my passport. I was like a snail, I carried my entire life on my back.
I tiptoed into Artie’s darkened bedroom – oh, the delightful wonder of black-out blinds – and undressed in silence. In the darkness I could feel the heat from his sleeping body and smell his beautiful skin. Then I slid quietly into bed, between his lovely sheets, and let myself start to loosen and relax.
Suddenly his arm shot out and he hauled me across the bed and up against him.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ I whispered.
‘I am.’
But he wasn’t.
Artie liked his early morning quickies.
He started by biting my shoulder, little nips, almost hard enough to hurt in a way that sent shivers through me. Then he moved down past my collar bone and began circling one nipple, then the other. We were in total darkness as, with bites and kisses, he moved the length of my body, right down to my feet, my toes, then up again.
There was no conversation, it was just pure sensation, until I thought I was going to explode, then he was moving into me, fast and furious. He waited till I’d come twice – I was relieved that at least that part of me was still in working order – then I felt him arching and shuddering and trying to bite back his broken cry of pleasure in case the kids heard. Within moments his breathing was even and steady again. He’d gone back to sleep.
Lucky bastard. I couldn’t sleep. I was exhausted but my head wouldn’t stop. I forced myself to breathe slowly and deeply and told myself sternly: It’s sleep time now; I’m in bed with Artie and it’s all okay.
It wasn’t working. I felt terribly uneasy. My sleeping tablets were just a few short feet away, in my bag, and I wanted to take one and obliterate myself for a while.
But not here. A sleeping tablet was too precious to waste. I wanted to be someplace where I could sleep without interruption and Artie was usually awake at six o’clock.
I realized I wanted to go home, and as soon as the thought crossed my mind relief burst inside me like a bomb – then I remembered, with a fresh lurch of loss, that home wasn’t home any more. The idea of going to the spare bedroom in my parents’ house didn’t have the same allure.
But the panic was rising. I couldn’t keep lying here with Artie’s arm round me.
I slid from the bed and dressed in the dark with an admirable minimum of clothes’ rustling – even in my bad state I could still take pride in my skill set – then left the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind me.
Soundlessly I floated down the glassy stairs. I am a ghost, I thought. I am a spectre. I am the living dead –
‘Helen! You’re here!’
‘Jesus Christ!’ I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest with fright.
It was Bella, standing in the hallway, wearing pink pyjamas and carrying a glass of some pink drink.
‘Are you here for the barbecue?’ she asked.
‘What barbecue? It’s five in
the morning.’
‘We’re having a barbecue. Later. This evening, at seven. We’re having home-made ginger ale.’
‘Lovely, but I have to go –’
‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
Actually I would have loved a glass of wine, but more than anything I had to get away.
‘Can I do your hair?’
‘I’ve got to go, sweetie –’
‘Why didn’t you come last night? We watched a great movie. About Edith Piaf. Oh, it was so sad, Helen. She had a hump on her back and had to become a drug addict because of it.’
‘Is that right?’ I wasn’t sure Bella had her facts entirely straight, but she was only nine so I let her persist in her delusions.
‘When she was a little girl, her mother ran away and she had to live in – what’s the word for the house where prostitutes live?’
‘A brothel.’
‘Yes, a brothel. But she didn’t become a prostitute, even though she could have. She loved only one man and the day after their wedding he was killed in a plane crash.’
Really? The very next day? If that was true, I thought, it was remarkably unfortunate.
‘She was a tragic figure, Helen.’
‘A tragic figure indeed.’ Whose words were those? They sounded like Vonnie’s. Had she watched the movie with them?
‘That’s what Mum said about her.’
Well, I had my answer. ‘I have to go now, Bella.’
‘Oh, do you? That’s really sad.’ She looked very downcast. ‘I have a quiz I want to do on you. I made it up myself, especially with you in mind, all about your favourite colours and your favourite things. But see you later, yes? Home-made ginger ale!’
35
Home-made ginger ale indeed. Who would have thought I’d have ended up dating a man who indulged in such practices? Or who had kids who did, at least? So odd, the whole romance thing, the way the most unlikely people got together.
Like, take Bronagh and Blake – you’d never have put them together. When they hooked up about four years ago, I was quite shocked and not just because I’d sort of thought it would always be just me and her. It was because Blake was a rugby-loving, boomy-voiced, money-mad Alpha, the type who automatically married slinky, long-limbed blondies, even if they’d been declared medically brain dead. You wouldn’t in a million years have thought that Bronagh would be his type.
