Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  When Karen realised how serious Damo’s drink problem was, she initially stuck by him but eventually kicked him out when he began to destroy both of their lives. It was the kick in the arse Damo needed. He went straight to an AA meeting and started to sort himself out, but eventually found the lure of his old drinking haunts too much and decided to move home, where he embraced a new lifestyle of good food and exercise in a bid to keep himself on the straight and narrow.

  Then Karen rang and told him she’d met someone else, which triggered a drinking binge that had lasted for weeks and culminated in the session in Offaly. He hadn’t had a drink since Stephen’s Day, but he didn’t know how long he’d abstain this time.

  “I knew after Offaly that I had to tell you,” he said after he’d told me everything. “I was hoping something might happen between us that night, but how could it with the state I was in? And maybe that’s not what you wanted, anyway.”

  I sighed. “It was, Damo, but I don’t know if it was for old times’ sake, or because of something deeper. All I know is that this is a very complicated situation – and it’s just become even more complicated.”

  “I think I’ve just made it impossible, let’s be honest.” Damo smiled self-depreciatingly. “I need to sort myself out and until I do, I can’t put anyone through the trauma of being around me. Maybe things could have worked out if I’d been able to conquer this problem sooner, or maybe our time is gone and we shouldn’t have been trying to relive something that almost happened, now that our circumstances have changed. You have four children to consider and you don’t need five . . . not that I’m assuming you’re still interested.”

  I smiled. “You’re still a ride bag, you know.”

  He returned my smile. “And you’d still make a great Bond girl.”

  “Now that’s just a blatant lie, but thanks anyway.” I picked up one of his AA books and flicked through it. “So, where do you go from here?”

  “I’ll be continuing with AA, but I was also hoping you might be able to recommend a counsellor to me. I have to beat this and I need to use every resource that’s out there.”

  “You’ve come to the right woman. I’ll text you some contact details for the best ones as soon as I get home.”

  “You were always the right woman, Holly. I wish things could be different.”

  I made it back to my car before I started bawling. Sometimes, life could be a right old bastard.

  Chapter 54

  Mum was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home. She had a pen in one hand and a fag in the other.

  “You’re dying to know what I’m scribbling about here, aren’t you?” she said after we’d gone through our usual exchange of me asking her how she was feeling and her saying she was shite. She’d even asked why I bothered asking when I must know that she’d be feeling shite, and did I want to make her feel worse by talking about feeling shite as well as feeling it? “Or am I even allowed to use the D- word any more without you having a fit about it?”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s a list of people to invite to your funeral,” I said.

  Susie had spent hours the previous evening talking about how exactly she wanted her funeral to go: Don’t let that auld hag Nelly McGregor in the door of the church . . . Get your cousin to stand there and keep her out if you have to – she won’t mess with him. Sure, he’d scare the dead in the graveyard with that beefy head on him. And I want good music to see me down the aisle in my coffin and out of the door. Nothing cringy like Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ or I swear on my life, I’ll haunt you all until the end of time. Maybe something like Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’. Yep, that’d be a good one . . .”

  Susie threw her pen on the table. “No, but you’re close, I’ll give you that. It’s a list of who I’m inviting to my ‘I’m fucked’ party.”

  “Your what?”

  “There’s no way I’m looking down on you, Cliff and your dad – or up, whatever the case may be – in the pub after I’m stuck in the ground, drinking your arses off and having sing-songs when I can’t join in. I’m going to have a party in a few weeks and invite everyone I know . . . give myself a proper send-off.

  “The only trouble is that your dad and I have always kept ourselves removed from life in general, so it won’t be the biggest party in the world. And sure, who could blame us? You know very well why we’ve done that. But sod it, the important people will be there – and none more important than myself. This will probably be the last party I’ll ever attend, so really, you could look on it as an historic occasion . . . a piece of family history.”

  Countless objections instantly formed in my head without me even having to think about what she’d just said. I braced myself to voice the more obvious ones.

  “But, Susie, you don’t know how you’ll be feeling in a few weeks . . . What if it’s all a bit much for you?”

  “Then you’ll all probably feel very uncomfortable and spend the night worrying that I’m going to collapse, but that’s fine by me. It’s my party and I’m not going to worry about you guys.”

  “But it’s . . . well, do you not think people might not want to celebrate this?”

  “If your dad asks people to go back to the pub after my burial, not one of them will refuse for fear of offending him or being disrespectful. And I’ll bet they’ll all be saying ‘Wouldn’t it be great if she was still here?’ and the like. Well, I’ll be at this party with bells on, so doesn’t it make sense to come to it? Might as well get their value out of me now! I can be sparkling company when I want to be, you know. Besides, nobody’s going to have the neck to say no to me.”

  “But what if . . .” I stopped.

  What was the point? Whether it was a good idea or a bad one, she was going to have this party anyway.

  “What if what? Come on, hit me with it.” She stuck her neck out, challenging me to come up with something good.

  “What if we can’t get the supplies of poitin up from Galway in time? I assume you’ll be inviting your uncle Joe . . . you know Joe won’t go to a party without poitin and you used all of ours during Meal Massacre . . .”

  She looked surprised. “A good point, that.” She scribbled a few words in her notepad. “I’ll put a call in to Galway and get someone on the case. Literally the case – Joe gets through poitin like water. If he were the one to die instead of me, his body would be preserved better than any mummy from all that alcohol.

  “Maybe I should take up heavy drinking from here on in and you could leave me sitting in the armchair for a few weeks after I die? It’d be like having a much quieter version of me around, which is what you, your dad and Cliff have always wanted really, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t take any more of it.

  “Susie, please stop. You’ve done nothing but crack awful jokes about . . .”

  “Dying?” Susie said loudly when I hesitated.

  “Yes, dying . . . since we got the prognosis. It’s either that or you’re ignoring the subject completely.”

  “And what do you want me to do, Holly? Mope around and fall apart? I seem to remember that I did that years ago and none of you were one bit happy about it. Misery gets old very fast. People feel sorry for you at the start, but after a few days it becomes a pain to them and they’re wondering how soon you can get over it. Is that what you want from me again?”

  “No, of course not, but it’s okay to articulate the fear you must be feeling about this—”

  “And she’s off.” Susie slammed the notebook shut. “I wondered how long it’d take before counsellor speak would come out.”

  Susie had never asked to avail of my skills as a counsellor. Neither of my parents had. And I’d never offered. My reasons for becoming a counsellor had never been questioned or discussed and I’d never offered up any information in relation to my choice, either. Everything related to my chosen profession amounted to an unspoken arrangement that suited us all.

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “Then sor
t out some of the details of this party with me. For everything else, I’m beyond help. Have been for a long time.”

  Chapter 55

  Susie had dubbed it the party of a lifetime. There wasn’t going to be anything different about it – because different equated to expensive in Susie’s head and ‘There won’t be anything left to pay for the funeral if we go too mad’ – but she seemed to get a kick out of calling it that, so we went along with it. In reality, we all knew the party was going to be muted at best. There were a few small things going against the prospect of this party being a huge success:

  As Susie had known it would be, the guest list was small. Family would consist of me, Willie, Cliff and his wife and children, Susie’s sister, Sheila, Susie’s uncle Joe, and Dad’s brother and his brood. Susie dropped contact with her cousins and other family members when she was a teenager, looking on them as no-hopers who’d only drag her down. As for friends, Hawaii was coming with Tropicana and Jaguar, who’d hopefully liven up the place, and her latest lover, Weston, a man whose voice was louder than both of her children’s put together, but that was about it. Other than Hawaii, no neighbours would be invited.

  It was happening here. In our house. Our house wasn’t a party house. The location, the state of the place . . . nothing about it yelled party. If you wanted a party that was doomed from the start you’d choose our place as the venue. Otherwise you’d book a section of a pub and have some chance at a bit of fun.

  Susie’s mood was growing darker by the day. Physically, she hadn’t deteriorated much since her diagnosis, but she was snappier than ever and mentally in shutdown. Her initial burst of enthusiasm for the whole party shebang had fizzled out as soon as Willie and I stopped putting up resistance to it, and she seemed to be looking on it as a nuisance now.

  “So, who’s coming to this thing, then?” she said as I doled pancakes onto her plate.

  I knew she wouldn’t eat more than half of one at best, but I felt like I should at least try to feed her up.

  “Dad’s brother, Mike, and his family are coming down from Louth for it.” That was four people. “Mike’s eldest son was hoping to make it over from London but he can’t get off work.” Still four. “Sheila.” Five. “Joe.” Six. “Hawaii and her crew.” Ten.

  Unless Hawaii and Weston were fighting – a strong possibility, from what Susie had told me – in which case we’d either have nine if they came without him, or eleven if he showed up at the door with a new girlfriend just to spite Hawaii. Either way, we’d be back to nine in the heel of the hunt after Hawaii would send him packing.

  “Cliff will be coming with his wife and kids, of course,” I said.

  Thirteen, most likely. Unlucky for some. I hoped Weston would come.

  “Anyone else?”

  Was she expecting someone else?

  “No, that’s it, except for you, Willie, me and the kids, of course.”

  Twenty. Good lord. This was like a dark foreshadowing of Susie’s funeral. It wasn’t exactly going to be standing room only when the time came.

  As soon as I thought that, I couldn’t quite believe that I had. And it had been so blasé, too. But that was the effect Susie’s attitude had – it normalised the situation to such an extent that I was starting to wonder what I was going to do for my own funeral. Maybe this was what she was aiming for. Maybe she wasn’t being callous and cruel in refusing to recognise that Willie and I had a problem with her dying even if she didn’t. Maybe it was her last loving gesture to us, to make up for ones she’d missed the boat on in the past . . .

  “Well, I wouldn’t count you lot, really. I see you every day. Not for much longer, of course. Get your fill of looking at me while you can.”

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Loving gestures and Susie didn’t tend to go hand in hand.

  “And what about Terry? You’re surely inviting him!”

  “Are you serious? The last thing I want is to have him there!”

  “You’re missing the point. This party is about what I want.”

  She picked up her phone. Within seconds, she was telling Terry all about her party.

  “He wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said when she hung up. “So, how many are we up to now?”

  An argument had been brewing for a while, but I’d steadfastly ignored the temptation to enter into one. Susie now passed her time making derogatory quips about the rest of us. Willie had completely stopped fighting with her – a sign that things were truly in a bad way – and even agreed with some of the complaints she made about him. Cliff wasn’t around to hear them most of the time, but I was quite sure his ears were burning at home.

  As for me, I’d resolved to let it all go over my head, but it was getting harder by the day and my tongue was covered in blisters from biting it. I felt like Susie was circling numbers on an imaginary bingo sheet in her head every time I did something to annoy her and as soon as she got a full house, she was going to explode.

  We were watching Room to Improve when the row broke out. Dermot Bannon, the show’s architect, was doing up a house in Sorrento Hill.

  “Oh dear. We can change the channel if this is going to be too upsetting for you, Holly.”

  “I think I’ll cope, Susie.”

  Susie spent the rest of the show commenting on how lovely Sorrento Hill looked. It was full of stuck-up bastards, of course, but there was no denying it was a picturesque area.

  “And to think that if you and your husband had communicated more, you might still be on that side.”

  I hadn’t heard this before.

  “Sorry?”

  “Poor Terry obviously felt he couldn’t talk to you about what was going on. But if he had, you might have been able to sort things out financially. You’ve always been tight. Terry’s the generous one. If a man feels he can’t talk to his wife about his problems . . . well, there was obviously some reason why he felt you were so unapproachable.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re doing that a lot recently. Where has the Susie of the Meal Massacre evening gone to? I liked her.”

  “Meal Massacre Susie was in denial. Let’s be honest, Holly,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Terry’s a far more reasonable person than you are. It can’t have escaped your notice that everyone gravitates to him and avoids you like the plague, surely?”

  My heart thumped in my chest. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so mad. It took everything I had in me not to tell Susie to get stuffed.

  “And now here you are again. In good old Blackbeg. I hadn’t planned to finish my life in this place, either,” she continued, “but that’s how it’s going to work out – and very soon at that. You don’t hear me complaining though, do you?”

  If I didn’t, it was a combination of developing very selective hearing since I’d moved back home and being half-deaf anyway from a lifetime of her wearing my ear out with the aforementioned moaning.

  Dad decided to contribute to the conversation.

  “If I’ve told you once, woman, I’ve told you a million times. If you get the treatment, you’re going nowhere.”

  “But I’m not getting it and I’m still going nowhere. Story of my life. Story of my daughter’s now, too. Right back where she started with no hope of getting out again.”

  Although there was no handbook on how to deal with parental illnesses, it was generally accepted that you just didn’t argue with, yell at or throw dirty accusations at a very sick person. Even if – no, when, in my case – you were very tempted. But Mum, having always been argumentative, seemed to think she had a green card to be completely obnoxious now. In her powerlessness to fight her illness she reacted with her tongue and that reaction was always against her family – as if we were the ones who’d done this to her. Her filter had always been dodgy and prone to letting things out that it shouldn’t, but it had come unstuck completely since her diagnosis.

  In my more horrible moments, my bad daughter m
oments, my bad person moments, I couldn’t help thinking that she relished the power that the illness had brought with it. But the power had also brought a cruelty that she seemed to be enjoying far too much and doling out far too generously. There were many times in my life when what I’d perceived to be her cruelty had scared me, and this was one of them. And next thing, I was seeing her cruelty and raising her some home truths. Enough was enough.

  “Just the way you like it then, eh, Mum? Does it make you feel better about you never getting out of here to see me back here again?”

  Dad frowned. “Don’t even start, Holly.”

  “Why? Because you want a quiet life? You’d rather let Mum’s poison go over your head than pull her up on insulting me because you want us to pipe down in time for the news?”

  “What’s over my head is a roof – the same one that’s over yours, thanks to us. Your mother has been through enough without you starting on her.”

  I nodded. “I wondered how long it would take for us to get to that point, Dad. You seem to forget that we’ve all been through stuff. I’m sorry you have cancer, Mum, but we both know that’s not what Dad’s talking about.”

  Mum’s face contorted. “You can be a right bitch when you want to be, Holly. You swan in here thinking you’re too good for Blackbeg now, too good for your own family.”

  “What? Where’s this coming from? Stop looking for things to fight with me about!”

  “You’re ashamed to be from here, aren’t you? Go on, admit it.”

  “I’m ashamed?”

  My voice reverberated off the walls in the room. I knew the neighbours three doors down would hear my side of the conversation clearly, but I didn’t care. We’d spent our whole lives caring about what people thought and look where that had got us.

  “You’re wrong,” Holly continued, “but now we’re getting to the heart of the issue, aren’t we? The truth is that you’re ashamed of Blackbeg and by extension, you’re ashamed of who you are. And you and your shame has messed up the course of my entire life. And you know what else? I think you know that very well. You know it, and you keep making my life harder and harder because the guilt has been gnawing away at you over the years—”