No Way to Say Goodbye (21 page)

“What the hell happened to your tooth?” Mary asked.

Penny remembered that when she’d got home from the party she’d needed a drink. After a few weeks of too much wine she’d decided to buy only beer. She hadn’t been able to find the bottle-opener. After a few minutes of searching, she had become annoyed and annoyance had turned quickly to frustration. Eventually she did what anyone else would have done: she used her teeth to get the top off the bottle. Her endeavour was successful – at the cost of a cap on her left molar, bought by her parents many years previously. Now Mary scrutinized her as she felt the gap in her mouth with her finger.

“I said, what happened your tooth?”

“It’s been loose for weeks. I must have lost it when I was asleep.”

“OK,” Mary said, as though she didn’t believe her.

“Anyway, enough of that. How’s one-dimensional Denis?” Penny said, in an attempt at distraction but also because she had a genuine interest in her friend’s nocturnal activities.

“He’s not one-dimensional.”

Penny scoffed. “And?”

“He followed me home from the party.” She started to make coffee.

“And the mood just came over you,” Penny noted, shaking her head. “Well, after how many months? I suppose that kind of thing can happen.”

“Ha-ha,” Mary said, giving Penny the fingers. She knew how Penny felt about Sam, but she was desperate to talk about his possible kiss with Flory and to seek counsel on the handling of such a delicate matter – or, at the very least, confirmation that ignoring it would be beneficial to their friendship. She thought she’d test the waters.

“And do you know what else?” she asked.

“I can’t wait,” Penny responded.

“I had a late-night caller.”

“A late-night caller?”

Mary nodded.

“Go on.”

“Sam.”

“What did he want?” The warmth left Penny’s voice so Mary decided against confiding in her.

“He thought I was being burgled.”

“What a hero!”

Mary changed the subject. “You really need to see a dentist.”

“What am I like, Mary?” Penny made a face, exposing the gap.

Mary smiled but didn’t respond – the question had been rhetorical, she knew.

After breakfast they sat out on Penny’s patio, each clasping her coffee mug for warmth.

“I forgot Ben’s anniversary,” Penny admitted, gazing up at the light blue sky.

“It doesn’t matter. You had a lot to deal with.” The anniversary had been weeks before and it hadn’t occurred to Mary to be annoyed that her best friend had forgotten it. Penny had enough problems of her own.

“It does matter. I’m really sorry.”

Mary nodded. “Sam left flowers.” She hadn’t intended to mention him again that morning – it had just slipped out.

“You’re joking,” Penny exclaimed, in wonderment. “How do you know? Did he leave a card?”

“No. Cassie Boxer saw him. She told Rita Sullivan Flowers who mentioned it to Jessie after Mass a week after he came here.”

“That’s weird.”

“I know you don’t like him, but I reckon I was wrong about him.”

“It doesn’t matter what any of us think,” Penny said, eyeing her friend. “He’s just passing through. This time next year he’ll be a memory, like the Burkenheffs.”

“The Brinkerhoffs,” Mary corrected her.

“My point exactly,” Penny said, smiling, “and in the meantime I hope he and Flory are very happy together.”

By this time Mary had half forgotten his little indiscretion.
What the…?
She returned Penny’s smile, then changed the subject again, in her get-ready-for-gossip voice: “You’ll never guess what I heard last night.”

“What?” Penny asked, gripped by the prospect of scandal.

“Bridget the Bike and her husband have split up.” This was met with silence. “Someone told her he’d fathered that child in Sneem.”

Penny inhaled sharply.

“I know,” said Mary.

“Bridget Browne. Oh, dear God!”

“Apparently she discovered the truth weeks ago. They’ve been trying to work it out but…” Mary was shaking her head. “After all this time I wonder how she found out?”

“Well, the whole town’s talking about it,” Penny said.

“Yeah – but I wonder if it’s really true?” Mary pondered.

“Of course it is,” Penny said, betraying a little panic. “You think it’s not?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time a rumour was unfounded.”

“Well, she’s left him, so it must be true.”

“Maybe. Still, I feel sorry for her. She sent me a lovely card when Ben died.”

Penny wasn’t ready to admit her part in the dissolution of the Brownes’ marriage so, despite the emergence of guilt, she managed a smile and inquired whether or not her friend wanted more coffee.

Later Penny was sitting in her dentist’s with a gap and a serious hangover. While she flicked through ancient magazines, she promised herself that she wouldn’t mix her drinks any more. It just wasn’t worth it. When she looked up, the woman opposite smiled. She smiled back, conscious of the gaping hole in her mouth.

“Cap?” the woman asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm. I have false teeth.” She loosened them in her mouth to demonstrate.

“Oh!”

“Eating steak’s a pain in the face.”

“Right.”

“I miss them all the same.”

“Right,” Penny said again, not sure whether the woman was referring to steak or her teeth.

The nurse called the steak-deprived woman in for consultation, leaving Penny alone. This time she picked up a celebrity gossip magazine that was normally not to her taste. She stared at the singer Mia Johnson crying on the front page. She read the article with shaking hands – and not just because she was hung-over: in that picture, the ever-elusive Sam Sullivan was standing behind Mia. She thought about bolting but the gap in her gob forbade anything so radical.

Once her tooth was fixed, she drove straight home and went online.
Who is this man?
At last she had found a story worth reporting.

Saying goodbye to his kids was always hard but this time Ivan didn’t experience the usual trauma. This time he had someone standing by him as he waved to them. Sienna had come to mean something to him. It had been just a matter of weeks, she was a bit younger and those around him, except Mary, felt he was too vulnerable to be serious but they were wrong: he had never felt stronger. He put his arm around Sienna as he watched his children disappear and she snuggled in tight.

“They’re nice kids,” she said.

“They are, even if they were little bastards to you,” he said. Chris had practically ignored her and Justine had followed his lead, and when they weren’t ignoring her they were either staring at her suspiciously or replying to her attempts at communication sulkily or sarcastically.

“They’ll get used to me,” she said, laughing.

“They have plenty of time,” he ventured.

“Yeah.”

Ivan sniffed a happy sniff and they made their way to the car park.

16. Digging for digging’s sake

It had been two weeks since the kiss that had never happened. In that time Mary and Sam had bumped into one another and behaved politely, embarrassed and yet maintaining the façade of normality. This polite distance was annoying to both parties who, although they were unwilling to admit to feelings beyond friendship, missed each other. Sam was particularly freaked and for many reasons, the first being his near-inability to control the impulse to kiss Mary.
What the hell was that all about?
Not to mention his suffocating jealousy of Denis.
So she slept with the guy – big deal.
Her sex life, now revealed, had been a shock. Ivan had painted her as some sort of recluse and all the while she’d been boffing some travelling musician.
People never cease to amaze
. He worried that he was attaching feelings to her in a bid to escape from himself. A new relationship was not advisable within the first year of rehab.
I’ve got enough to deal with
.

But there was something else – something he wouldn’t admit to. It was ego-related. Mary didn’t pay attention to him in the way other women did. Sam often observed them looking at him. It was difficult not to, they made it so obvious. Some just stared and giggled or raised their voices in an attempt to gain his attention. Others grabbed at him, patting his ass while making suggestions into his ear, usually when they were drunk and at their least attractive. Other guys envied the effect he had on women, but Sam was bored with it. As with many men, for him the best part of an initial attraction was the hunt, but he’d had no need to exert himself since his late teens. It was rare that he wasn’t the most beautiful man in the room and women were not ashamed to let him know of their interest.

He wasn’t stupid enough to believe they were interested in him as a person. He had long ago come to terms with the fact that most women were far more interested in his looks than in anything he had to say. Sam was one of the few men on earth who could identify with a
Playboy
model. Of course, Mia hadn’t been like most of the women who had crossed his path. She had seen past his face and loved him, but she didn’t know him, not like Mary.
But how the hell could Mary know me?
And he knew her.
I just don’t know why
.

After they had spent two weeks pussyfooting around one another, he was relieved when she asked him to meet her for dinner. He agreed straight away.

Mary arrived at the restaurant early. She was a stickler for punctuality, always overestimating how long it would take her to get from one place to another. After years of arriving between ten and twenty minutes early, she had learned to ensure that she always carried reading material. She ordered a glass of house red from Roni Shea, who was desperate to talk about the Browne break-up.

“So you’ve heard nothing?” she said, eyeing Mary while tapping her pencil against her order book in a slightly menacing fashion.

“No more than you.”

“It’s amazing – I mean, the child is six months old. You’d think she would have found out sooner,” she pointed out astutely.

“Well, maybe it was the girl – what’s her name?”

“Tracy Whelan – and, no, it definitely wasn’t Tracy. Bridget attacked her after Mass on Sunday and gave her a black eye, and Lisa Harmon says she knocked out a front tooth.” She was nodding animatedly, but speaking in a hushed tone.

“Ah, well,” said Mary, afraid that Sam would catch her gossiping and wanting to end the conversation.

“It all happened in Sneem. The parish priest had to pull them apart. Apparently Tracy Whelan gave as good as she got. Of course, it’s sad for the little one.” Roni’s voice softened, as did her eyes.

“Yeah,” Mary agreed, “the poor child.”

Suddenly Roni became awkward and businesslike, as though she’d just remembered Mary had lost her own child. She reddened and made her escape to fetch Mary’s wine. Just then the door opened and Sam entered, making an immediate impression on the girl behind the counter. Mary’s head was in her book. The girl blushed and stuttered a welcome. He pointed towards Mary to suggest he’d found his date. The girl seemed startled – as though it was impossible to imagine the living embodiment of Barbie’s Ken eating with Mary of the Sorrows.

When he arrived at their table, Mary put down her book and smiled. He didn’t lean in for a kiss and she hadn’t expected him to. To an observer they would have seemed easy together, but after a glass of wine Mary was still not relaxed. She was glad that Sam had agreed to meet her but it soon became apparent that he was as tense as she was.

After her initial humiliation, she had come to realize it had actually been a good thing that Denis had arrived into her kitchen when he did. If he had not she would have jumped the man whose hand had electrified hers and whose close proximity had set some sort of fire in her – and that would have been bad, because she wasn’t blind. During the time Sam had lived in her small town Mary had noticed the effect he had on women and she didn’t want him to mistake her for another who would fall willingly at his feet. She wanted to know him because he was more than pretty. His eyes betrayed a troubled soul and possibly a fractured heart. Broken herself, she had the capacity to see it in others, despite their attempts to hide it. She was drawn to damaged souls like a moth to a flame. She wanted to help him. She didn’t know how or why or even if she could, but something inside her told her to try. She also knew he wouldn’t be around for much longer and that their time together would be short. Friendship had to be enough.

“I’m glad you called,” he said, while he studied the menu.

“I’m thrilled you came. Besides, I wanted to apologize.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who invaded your space.”

“Space invader,” she mumbled, and laughed nervously at her own joke.

“That wasn’t funny,” he said, but his eyes gave him away.

“Frig off !”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Well, I know what knickers are but what in the hell is a frig?”

“It’s a replacement word for ‘fuck’.”

“Why not just say what you mean?”

“Well, I used to, until Nora Donnelly asked my three-year-old if he wanted an Ice Pop and he told her to go fuck herself.”

He laughed and she laughed with him.

“I stopped swearing then.”

For a minute or two they sat in silence over the menus. “You say, ‘Are you kidding me?’ at least once a day,” Mary told him, out of nowhere.

“I do?”

“Yip.”

“Does it bug you?” He grinned.

“A little bit.”

He laughed. “I’ll do my best to correct that.”

“Don’t. Nobody likes perfect.”

They laughed together and any remaining ice thawed. He turned to look for a waitress, who appeared within a second at his side.

Later, over dessert, they talked about movies. Sam wasn’t really into cinema but it was something to talk about that deflected from his misguided past.

“Robert and I saw
St Elmo’s Fire
eight times.” They had planned to move to America based on their love affair with that film.

Sam was amused. “You were going to move to the States because of one movie?”