No Way to Say Goodbye (27 page)

“So why didn’t you?”

“I was afraid. I hadn’t been a decent person for such a long time.”

His eyes were dark and the melancholy she had seen in them that first night had returned. “And you’re a better man now?” she asked.

“I’m trying to be,” he said quietly, his eyes cast down.

“And your girlfriend?” she said, after a moment.

His eyes locked with hers and they shared a terrible sadness. “I didn’t love her.”

She turned back to the water.

After a few minutes she faced him again. “I need some space,” she said.

“Because of my past?”

“No, because of mine. When I’m around you I feel like I’m falling. I need to stop before I smash into the ground.”

“Are you always so honest?”

“No. Mostly I’m a liar like you.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“But you won’t be staying here.”

“You don’t know that,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, I do,” she said sadly, and stood up.

He grabbed her hand and held it until she pulled it away. Desolate now, he nodded. This was the first time either had shown their true feelings – and all at once it was over.

“I just need some time,” she said, and left him with the bobbing red buoy for company.

She knows. She knows I’m not worth it.

On the day that the article was published about Mia Johnson, Penny began a week of self-induced oblivion. She’d requested a two-week leave of absence and because she rarely took holidays, her editor – the traitor – was happy to agree. She’d stocked up on booze and snacks in Killarney and, on returning home, she’d parked her car in her garage. Once inside she’d pulled out the plug on her home phone, switched off her mobile, locked the doors, closed the curtains and opened the first of many bottles, thus beginning a long descent to a place that Dante had termed
The Inferno.

A few days had passed when she heard knocking. She wasn’t sure how long Ivan had stayed there, interspersing the banging with calling her name, because she had drifted off to sleep in the middle. It might have been seconds or hours.
Just go away
. The second time she’d woken, all was quiet. The vodka bottle was nearly empty. She got up and went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and placed the near-empty bottle beside a fresh one, which was close to some eggs that she considered frying. Her stomach turned. She closed the fridge, then reconsidered. She opened the fridge again, took out the near-empty bottle and put it into the freezer. She switched on the oven timer for ten minutes, then sat on the floor and watched the countdown.

When the buzzer sounded, she opened the freezer, took out the bottle, downed the contents and spluttered.
This is the life.

Four days into her binge, she had decided to open her laptop and write down why she felt she was a drunk. Even though she had drunk two bottles of vodka before midday she felt surprisingly lucid and it seemed a tremendous idea. She entitled the Word document “Why?” She took a drink from a fresh bottle of vodka, with a dash of lime.
Nice.
After a moment or two, with her muse coursing down her throat, she was ready to begin. She flexed her fingers and wiped the residual spittle from her lips.

She decided to title each paragraph and her diatribe went as follows:

Why?

Parents

My mother was on the pill,
ergo
my conception was as a result of a nasty case of the trots. Apparently my unlucky parents had decided against having children, even considering abortion, but then Catholic guilt set in and the fear of an angry God ensured that I would survive gestation to emerge into a world that didn’t give a fuck. Were my parents cruel? Certainly not intentionally – but being cruel requires giving attention, which is something neither could afford. Do I wish I was aborted? Yes. It would have been kinder. Did my parents love me? How could they? I was fed and clothed. I was educated and then nothing. They don’t even know me. I don’t know them. Aren’t parents supposed to know their kids? Aren’t they supposed to care? So I wasn’t abused. But was I neglected? Doesn’t it mean something when you feel closer to your best friend’s dad than you do to your own? Why didn’t they care? Was it me? Why was it that when I was born the change that occurs in everyone else’s parents didn’t occur in mine? Where was my unconditional love? How is it that I could be so alone from such a young age? Why didn’t they love me? Why didn’t they love me? Why?

Adam

He was my world. He promised me he would wait. He told me he loved me and I believed him. I believed him because he did love me. It was real, it just wasn’t enough. He picked his wife over me. He picked his kids over me. Funny how the man I love and who loves me would choose his children and misery over me, and my father would choose his stupid job. Is it me? It must be. There is an emptiness in me that is noticeable. I couldn’t make Adam happy. Just like his wife, I would be a letdown. That’s why he left: deep down he knows there is nothing to me. How could there be? That night when we danced in the garden and when he said goodbye, I wanted to die. I desperately wanted to die. Why? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I get over him? Why can’t I just feel normal? Why won’t he choose me? Why won’t he choose me? Why?

Mary

She gave me hope. That first day on the train to Dublin she sat beside me and when she looked at me she made me feel like I was special. Together we were popular and she brought out all that was good and funny in me. Her encouragement ensured that I would strive to be the entertainer. Now I am the consummate entertainer but to be that I needed help. Why? I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to make her laugh. And now she judges me. She got pregnant and I was there for her. She nearly died and I nearly died with her. She lost her son and disappeared but I stayed with her because I loved her through it all. How hard is it to stay with someone so destroyed? Fucking hard. How hard is it to witness desperation? It’s a nightmare. Watching the person you care about utterly decimated is tantamount to a knife cutting through bone. I didn’t desert her. Has she deserted me? Worse, has she deserted me for some prick she doesn’t even know? The girl who was once impenetrable now reduced to a sucker for an arsehole. Heroin is forgivable but alcohol is not? Why has she chosen him over me? Why has she deserted me? Why?

Me

I am nothing.

After that she stopped writing. She went to the fridge and pulled out a cold bottle of vodka, opened it and drank from the neck because she was thirsty, because she was desperate, but mostly because she wanted to vanish.

She lost track of time as the days blended into each other. She ignored the doorbell. One morning she woke to find a card on her mat. It was from Mary. She had written one word:
Sorry.
Penny tore it up, binned it, and then she cried until she was sure there was nothing left. A while later she began to feel hungry for something other than a bag of crisps, but she didn’t want to stop drinking long enough to sober up so she called a taxi to take her to a little pub that served traditional fare just outside the town.

She found a quiet corner booth and hid there drinking while she picked at a plateful of cottage pie and salad. It was when she got up to go to the Ladies that she saw Ivan and Sam. However, she felt sure they didn’t see her. She washed her face with cold water and cursed herself for leaving her coat in her seat. She hadn’t paid either so she couldn’t leave. She knew she could return to her table without them noticing her but she couldn’t risk attracting the attention of the barman – and she’d been waiting for him to approach her for a while. She needed another drink.
Damn it.
She emerged from the Ladies and gingerly made her way back to her seat.

The men had their backs to her and were deep in conversation. She wished she was a fly on the wall – but of course she didn’t need to overhear what Sam was saying. He was probably tearing her apart and Ivan had been nodding so he was probably agreeing.
Bastards
. She could hear them laughing.
At me?
Of course. She heard them get up so she pressed herself into her seat and they passed her without spotting her.
Thank God,
she thought, and ordered another drink.

Much later, when the same taxi man who had dropped her off had collected her and helped her inside, she flipped open her laptop and opened her document to add Ivan’s name to the list of reasons she was finding for being a drunk.

Ivan

He’s a backstabbing bastard.

She woke some time in the afternoon a week after the article had been published. Her head hurt, her breath stank and she was so dehydrated that her skin was flaking. She decided to clean up. Enough was enough. She couldn’t go on as she had been. She accepted that she didn’t want to. She even considered getting help. She poured the last of the booze stash down the drain. She showered and made herself some toast, which she barely nibbled. She opened her laptop and looked through her emails. All were work-related, even though her colleagues were well aware that she was on holiday. She opened up the document that blamed everyone and everything for her problems.

“Stupid girl,” she heard herself say. She missed Mary and Ivan, but mostly she missed Adam. She watched an afternoon movie, but by seven she was pacing the floor with her head in her hands, her body screaming.

While Penny spent a week drinking, Mary was catching up on sleep and work. Sam played guitar, took long walks, ate late suppers in restaurants now busy with tourists. He had read, listened to music and once he’d even sat in the large empty church, soaking up the silence and contemplating his own Catholic upbringing. His mother was of Irish-Catholic descent, his father Irish-Polish Catholic. His mother had gone to a Catholic girls’ school and his father had been taught by the Christian Brothers. They had met at a Catholic dance, aged seventeen and eighteen respectively. They were married at twenty-two and -three in a big traditional Catholic wedding. He had been baptized, he’d made his First Communion and was confirmed. For his first fifteen years he had sat in one of God’s many houses on Sunday after Sunday and yet, aside from stillness, churches and Catholicism had nothing to offer him.

He looked around him at stone and tile, stained glass and candles. He could smell incense and hear the whispered prayer of a nun. He left unsurprised that, for him, it still held nothing. The nightmares had returned and no amount of guitar-playing, late suppers or even religion would make them go away.

Mid-week he’d met Ivan for a pint in a small bar a few miles outside town. Ivan had only an hour to spare as the kids had come home with him and he didn’t like leaving them with a frazzled Sienna. He filled Sam in on how his ex-wife was coping and when she would be released from hospital. They discussed her indecision as to whether or not to press charges against her boyfriend and, more importantly, whether or not she would come home. Ivan was adamant that the bastard who had broken her deserved everything he got, but he was afraid she would go back to him.

Halfway through his pint, Ivan had mentioned another fear he’d harboured since he’d first seen his wife twisted and bloody. “You don’t think he would have forced himself on her?” he’d asked, and Sam had nearly dropped his glass.

“Has she said anything?” he asked, recovering.

“No. And I can hardly ask her.”

“I doubt it,” Sam said, and finished his pint. “Just because he hits it doesn’t mean he…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

“You’re right. But if I ever find out he did, I’ll hunt him down and I’ll kill him,” Ivan said, with conviction.

“If you find he did, I’ll be happy to help you,” Sam said.

“You’re a good friend,” Ivan said. “For a junkie!” He laughed at his own wit.

Sam had become used to his past indiscretions being joked about, and he was smart enough to know that, although they teased, those around him would not tolerate his failure to remain clean. This worried him. Each night that passed made it harder, and all the more so now that he was being watched.

They talked a little bit about the aftermath of Penny’s article. The furore hadn’t been as considerable as it might have been. To Ivan and, indeed, most of the townspeople, the fact that Sam had got and stayed clean was a major achievement. The man described in the newspaper was far from the one he and his fellow townspeople had come to know, and when judgement was passed, it favoured their new resident, as Mary had expected it would.

Ivan had been sheepish when he broached the subject of Sam’s famous ex but he couldn’t help himself. “Give me something.”

“Something?” Sam was playing with his new friend.

“Anything at all.”

“OK.” Sam sat back in his chair. Then he put his hand to his chin.

“Oh, come on!”

“It’ll stay between you and me?” Sam asked.

“Absolutely,” Ivan agreed, yet both men knew Ivan couldn’t hold his water.

“Horror movies turn her on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean horror gets her really hot.” She’d jumped him midway through
Scream
. “The gorier the better.”

“Really? I love horror films.” Ivan seemed satisfied with the titbit he’d been given. “One last thing.”

“What?”

“Did you ever do J-Lo?”

Ivan seemed lighter and happier since his kids had come home, Sam thought. They had wiped the gloom from his eyes. His smile was warmer and his laugh heartier. Neither mentioned Mary, and Ivan didn’t say anything when he saw a dishevelled Penny sneak into a booth.
It’s not the time. God save her!

21. My, oh, Mia

It was one of those days that Ben would have called yellow – bright and sunny enough for summer. Mary had just returned from a shift at the bar and was busy fixing the remote controls in line with the corner of the coffee-table when the doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting company. Penny hadn’t spoken to her for more than a week. Sam was giving her the space she had asked for. Ivan was busy with his kids. She answered it, expecting to see no one in particular.