Anybody Out There?

by Marian Keyes

  It was him.

  “Just in time,” Leisl said.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” He did a quick scan of the circle and his glance landed on me. “Anna, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I lost your card. I’m a mess,” he said. “But I’ve got the number here.”

  He handed me a piece of white paper and I unfolded it and gazed at the number written on it. Ten precious digits that would lead me to Aidan. Right, I could go now!

  But I stayed where I was. They’d all been so nice that I felt it would be rude to leave. And now that I was there and the groany cello music was going full blast, I began to hope that something might happen. I mean, what if today is the day that you decide to “come through” and I’d gone to get a pedicure?

  49

  The first message was for Mitch.

  “Trish is here,” Leisl said, her eyes closed. “She looks like an angel today. So pretty, I wish you could see her. Mitch, she’s asking me to tell you that things will get better. She says she’ll always be with you, but you’ve got to start moving on.”

  Mitch looked as bleak as any person could look. “How?”

  “It’ll happen, if you’re open to it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not open to it,” Mitch said. “Trish,” he said, and it was shocking hearing him address her directly. “I’m not moving on, because I don’t want to leave you behind.”

  Silence fell and we all shifted a little uncomfortably. After a while, Leisl spoke. “Barb, who’s Phoebe?”

  “Phoebe?” Barb exclaimed, in her gravelly voice. “Well, who knew? She was one of my lovers, we shared a guy, famous painter, modesty forbids, edcedera, edcedera. She was married to him, I was humping him, then we both got rid of him and took up with each other. For a while. Heh, heh, heh. So what’s up, Phoebe, baby?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Okay.” Leisl sighed. “I’m sorry about this, Barb, but Phoebe wants to tell you that—and I’m quoting here—‘he never loved you, you were only sex.’”

  “Only sex? Whaddaya mean, ‘only’ sex? Sex is what it’s all about!”

  “Let’s move on,” Leisl said quickly.

  This is crazy, I thought. A beyond-the-grave slanging match. I shouldn’t be here. I’m normal and sane, these people are nuts…

  Then Leisl said, “I’m getting a man,” and my stomach nearly jumped out of my mouth. It jumped straight back in again when Leisl said, “He’s called Frazer. Mean anything to anyone?”

  “Me!” Mackenzie said, at the same time as Leisl said, “Mackenzie, it’s for you. He says he’s your uncle.”

  “Great-uncle. Cool! So where’s the missing will, Great-uncle Frazer?”

  Leisl listened for a moment, then said, “He says there is no missing will.”

  “But there’s gotta be a will!”

  Leisl shook her head. “He seems totally sure.”

  “But if there’s no will, what am I going to do for money?”

  “He says get a job.” Pause for Leisl to listen to the voice in her head. “Or marry a rich guy.”

  “That’s outrageous!” Leisl added.

  Mackenzie’s tanned face was flushed. “Tell him from me he’s a drunken asshole who knows nothing. Get me Great-aunt Morag! She’ll know.”

  Leisl sat with her eyes closed.

  “Get me Great-aunt Morag!” Mackenzie ordered, as if Leisl was a personal assistant.

  I felt very sorry for Leisl—having to pass on stuff that people didn’t want to hear, and even though the messages were allegedly coming from somewhere else, she seemed to get the blame.

  “He’s gone,” Leisl said. “And no one else is coming through.”

  “This is bullshit!” Mackenzie exclaimed. She huffed and puffed for the next little while about how she should be in the Hamptons right now—I knew it!—but that she was coming here to help her family and—

  “Shhh,” Pomady Juan said. “A little respect.”

  Mackenzie put her hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.” Then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Sorry. Sorry, Leisl.”

  Leisl was sitting very still. She hadn’t opened her eyes in a while.

  “Anna,” she said slowly. “Someone wants to talk to you.”

  Instantly my forehead was drenched with sweat.

  “It’s a man.”

  I closed my eyes and clenched my fists. Please God, oh, please God…

  “But it’s not your husband. He’s your grandfather.”

  Again with the grandparents!

  “He says his name is Mick.”

  My arse! I’d no granddad called Mick. But hold on a minute, I thought, what about Mum’s dad, Granny Maguire’s wretched spouse? What was his name? I didn’t remember him because…

  “You never knew him. He died shortly after you were born, he says.”

  All the little hairs on my arms lifted and a shiver shot down my spine. “That’s right. Oh my God. Has he met Aidan? Up there? Like, wherever they are?”

  Leisl’s brow was furrowed and her fingers were pressed to her temples. “I’m sorry, Anna, someone else is coming through, a woman. I’m losing him.”

  I wanted to leap from my seat, grab her head, and shriek, “Well, get him back, for God’s sake. Find out about Aidan. Please!”

  “Sorry, Anna, he’s gone. The woman with the stick is back, the angry woman from last week, who was talking about your dog.”

  Granny Maguire? I was in no mood to talk to that old witch. It was probably her who had scared Granddad Mick away. The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was going to say them. “Tell her to fuck off!”

  Leisl flinched, then flinched a second time. “She has a message for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “She says, ‘Fuck off yourself.’”

  I was speechless.

  “Oh boy.” Leisl sounded upset.

  The mood in the room was extremely uncomfortable.

  “I’m so sorry,” Leisl said. “Today has been very strange. This is usually a very loving place. A lot of angry energy here today. Should we stop?”

  We decided to continue and the remainder of the messages—from Nicholas’s dad, Steffi’s mother, and Fran’s husband—were uncontroversial.

  Then the time was up, the Oklahoma! boys needed the space, and out in the corridor afterward, I cornered Mitch.

  “Thank you so much for this.” I indicated the piece of paper. “Do you mind…can I ask you a bit about your reading with Neris? Like, what convinced you she was for real?”

  “There was some personal stuff that no one else could have known about. Trish and me, we had special names for each other.” He smiled, half embarrassed. “And Neris told me them.”

  That sounded convincing.

  “Did Trish say where she was?” My obsession: Where was Aidan?

  “I asked her and she said she couldn’t describe it in a way that I’d understand. She said it was less of a question of where she was and more of a question what she had become. But that she was always with me.

  “I asked her if she was scared, and she said no. She said she was sad for me, but that she was happy where she was. She said she knew it was hard but that I had to try to stop thinking of her as a life interrupted. It was a life completed.”

  “What happened…to Trish?”

  “How did she die? An aneurysm. One Friday night she came home from work, same as usual—she was a teacher, an English teacher. About seven o’clock she said she was feeling dizzy and nauseous, by eight she was in a coma, and by one-thirty A.M. in the ICU, she was dead.” He paused. Like Aidan, Trish had died young and suddenly. No wonder I’d felt such a tangible connection with Mitch.

  “Nothing anyone could have done. Nothing that would have showed up in any tests. I still can’t believe it.” He sounded baffled. “It happened so quickly. Too quickly to believe it, you know?”

  I knew. “How long ago did it happen?”

  “Nearly ten months
. It’ll be ten months on Tuesday. Anyway.” He swung his kit bag on his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the gym.”

  He looked like he went to the gym a lot. There was a bunched force in his shoulders and upper body, like he lifted weights. Maybe it was his way of coping.

  “Best of luck with Neris,” he said. “See you next week.”

  50

  I called Neris Hemming’s number as soon as I got home, but a recorded message told me that their office hours were Monday to Friday, nine until six. I slammed down the phone far too hard, and in one of those sudden uprisings of acid rage, I shrieked, “Oh, Aidan!”

  A storm of tears overtook me and I convulsed with frustration, my powerlessness, and my terrible, terrible need.

  A few minutes later, I wiped my face and said humbly, “I’m sorry.”

  I repeated, “I’m sorry,” to every photo of Aidan in the apartment. It wasn’t his fault that Neris Hemming’s office took Sundays off. And this was a holiday weekend, so they probably wouldn’t be in tomorrow either.

  I’d ring from work on Tuesday, I decided. I was so terrified of losing the number that I wrote it in several—hopefully unexpected—places, just in case someone ever broke into my apartment and decided to steal all the Neris Hemming numbers. I put it in my organizer, I wrote it on a receipt and hid it in my knickers drawer, I wrote it on the inside cover of Never Coming Back (never coming back? Oh, we’ll see about that, missus), and I indented it in the lid of a very old tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey (the pen wouldn’t work on the cold, waxy cardboard) and replaced it in the freezer.

  Now what?

  I braced myself to ring Aidan’s parents; Dianne had called while I was out. Somehow—and I’d no idea how it had happened because it was the last thing I wanted—we’d got into a routine where she rang me every weekend. I dialed their number, screwed my eyes up tight, and beseeched, over and over, in my head, Don’t be in, don’t be in, oh, please don’t be in, but—damn—Dianne picked up. She sighed. “Oh, Anna.”

  “How are you, Dianne?”

  “I’m pretty bad, Anna. I’m pretty low. I was thinking about Thanksgiving.”

  “But it’s only July.”

  “I don’t want to do it this year. I was thinking of just getting the hell out, going on vacation on my own, to a place where they don’t have Thanksgiving. It’s a time for family. And I can’t bear it.”

  She began to sob quietly.

  “To lose a child, it’s the most unbearable pain. You’ll meet someone else, Anna, but I’ll never get my baby back.”

  This had happened the few times we’d talked. She engaged in competitive grief: Who has more right to be devastated? A mother or a wife?

  “I won’t meet someone else,” I said.

  “But you could, Anna, that’s my point, you could.”

  “How’s Mr. Maddox?” I could never think of him as having a first name.

  “Coping in his usual way. Buried in his work. I’d get more emotional support from a three-year-old.” She laughed, in a scary way. “You know what, I’ve kind of had it.”

  I was pretty sure I knew what was coming next for Dianne. It was the old, old story. She’d go on a women’s retreat, where they all run around in their pelt, daubed with blue paint, worshiping the female goddess, proud that their knockers reach their belly buttons. When they weren’t dancing in a clearing under a full moon, they’d be making big fun of men, so that when she came back to Boston, she’d stop covering the gray in her hair and making dinners for Mr. Maddox. She might even get a Harley and a crew cut and be part of the Dykes on Bikes contingent of Gay Pride.

  “I’d better go, Dianne. You take care. We’ll talk about the ashes some other time.” We still hadn’t sorted that out.

  “Yeah,” she said wearily. “Whatever.”

  Done for another week! Oh, the relief! Feeling light and free, I rang Mum; I had to check that I had a granddad called Mick. And if I had? Did that make Leisl a real medium? I knew she came through with messages for the others—but she knew all their stories, she knew what they wanted to hear.

  However, she knew very little about me. Mind you, how hard would it be to find an Irish family with a man called Mick in it? Lucky guess? But that thing about me never having met him was harder to explain away…Another lucky guess?

  Mum answered the phone with a gaspy “Hello.”

  “It’s me, Anna.”

  “Anna, pet! What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. I’m just calling for a chat.”

  “A chat?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Because everyone knows we watch Midsomer Murders at this time on a Sunday night. No one rings.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know. Okay, I’ll call back later.”

  “Ah, sure, go on, stay where you are. We’ve seen this one already.”

  “Er, all right. You know Granny Maguire’s husband?”

  A pause. “Do you mean my father?”

  “Yes! Sorry, Mum, yes. What was his name? Was it Michael? Mick?”

  Another pause. “Why do you want to know? What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. Mick? Yes or no?”

  “Yes.” Said reluctantly.

  My scalp crawled. Oh my God. Leisl must have been onto something.

  “And I never knew him? He died when I was born?”

  “Two months after.”

  A wave of tingling flushed right down my body. Surely that was more than just a lucky guess by Leisl. But if she was really talking to the dead, why hadn’t Aidan come forward…?

  “What’s going on?” Mum asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s going on?” Louder this time.

  “NO-thing!”

  51

  Via a series of cunning lies—I told Rachel I was going to Teenie’s, I told Teenie I was spending the day with Jacqui, and I told Jacqui I was hanging out with Rachel—I managed to avoid having to attend any holiday rooftop barbecues and firework displays on Monday and had a pleasant enough time, sitting downwind of my air conditioner and watching reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard, Quantum Leap, and M*A*S*H.

  I liked—loved—being in our apartment. It’s where I felt closest to him. God knows we’d gone through hell and back to get it. I know it’s a cliché about how hard it is to get a half-decent apartment in Manhattan, but it’s only a cliché because it’s true. “Large, bright, airy apartment” was the holy grail but you paid through the nose for every inch of floorboard and window. “Poky, gloomy kip, miles from the subway” was what most people ended up settling for.

  After Aidan and I got engaged, we’d started looking for a place, but it was impossible. After getting nowhere for weeks, we were walking past a realtor’s window one evening when we saw a picture of a “bright and airy loft.” In a neighborhood we liked and—much more importantly—at a rent we could afford.

  Gripped with a sense that this was our destiny, we set up a viewing for the very next day. This was it, we thought. Finally, we would have a home! So sure were we that we brought along the first two months’ rent. Who could blame us for thinking we were pretty savvy?

  “We’re going to be a normal couple,” I said as we got the subway there. “We’re going to have a nice apartment and have friends over for dinner and go antiquing at the weekends.” (I had only the vaguest idea of what “antiquing” involved but everyone did it.)

  However, when we got to the apartment we discovered nine other couples also viewing. The place was so small there was barely room for us all, and as the twenty of us bumped and jostled resentfully, forming queues to peer into closets and examine the shower, the realtor guy watched with an amused smile. Eventually, he clapped his hands together and called for attention. “Everyone had a good look?”

  A chorus of yeses.

  “You all love it, right?”

  Another babel of agreement.

  “Okay, here’s how it is. You’re all great people. I’m going back to my office
now and the first couple to reach me with three months in cash gets the apartment.”

  Everyone froze. Surely the guy couldn’t mean…? But he could: the couple who beat off all the other contenders to make it forty-seven blocks uptown in the fastest time got the apartment.

  It was like a reality show writ small and already three or four of the guys were wedged in the doorway, trying to get out.

  Aidan and I were staring at each other in horror: this was disgusting. And in a split second I saw what was about to happen: Aidan was going to launch himself into the scrum. I knew he didn’t want to but he was prepared to do it for me. Before he bolted for the door, I placed a hand on his chest and stopped him.

  Barely moving my lips and indicating the scrum with an eye flick, I said, “I’d rather live in the Bronx.”

  Deep understanding dawned. Just as quietly he replied, “I read you, Lieutenant.”

  Already the room had emptied. The only people remaining were the realtor and us. The others were already desperately hailing cabs or thundering down the steps of the subways, ready to vault over the ticket machines or running—actually running—forty-seven blocks.

  “Leave slooowly,” I told Aidan.

  “Over and out.”

  The realtor noticed our lazy saunter. Sharply he looked up from whatever he’d been doing with his briefcase. Wanking into it, probably, we later decided. “Hey! You guys better get moving. Don’t you want this apartment?”

  Aidan held his gaze and said—sadly, like he felt terribly sorry for the man: “Not that badly, buddy.”

  Down on the street I began to regret our principled stand. It was only then that I understood that we hadn’t got the apartment. (In my head, we had already moved in and were living there and had bought a plant.)

  Aidan squeezed my hand. “Baby, I know you’re choked. But we’ll think of something. We’ll get a place.”

  “I know.”

  I took a strange comfort from knowing that Aidan and I were the same, that we had the same values.