Wandering in Exile (6 page)

He stood waiting for the lights to change, clutching the bags from Harvey’s. They’d be cold but it wouldn’t matter. Tonight, she was going to make out with Danny Boyle.

She didn’t want to have sex with him. Getting laid on St. Patrick’s Day was far too clichéd, but fooling around with someone who wouldn’t try anything was just what she needed. It would appease the wanton within, the Harpie that emerged when she drank too much. She had been very popular during her first few years away at university. Only, she got a bit of a reputation. Boys were still studs and girls were still sluts, just like it had been in high school. There hadn’t been anybody since, except Danny Boyle and he had a girl back home.

“Come and sit beside me,” she beckoned from the couch as Danny returned from the kitchen with a bottle of Mateus Rosé.

“No, you’re fine there.”

“Come on, I won’t bite.”

“Only if you promise then.”

She pulled her knees up to her chin as he sat and poured. “Danny, play me a song.”

“I’m too drunk. Besides, we spent the whole night listening to songs.”

“Not those kind of songs. Sing me one of your songs. I’ve heard you singing bits and pieces of them and I want to hear a whole song. Sing me a song about you.”

She really had to pester him until he picked up his guitar and twanged and tuned for a while.

“Close enough,” he laughed in his shy way and began to strum as she lowered the lamp behind her. He changed as his strumming became a rhythm. His hands grew steadier and his eyes began to clear, the boozy blur began to part and he sang. Unsurely at first, but steadying, and he sang about being alone. About being so terribly alone, about love and all good things coming and going but always leaving him alone. But not in a whiney way, Danny sang like a man who had been all the way down and had come back to tell about it. She couldn’t help it. She almost began to cry for him, for her, and for them. She uncoiled beside him, reaching one arm around his back as she rested her head against his shoulders, listening to him singing in time with his heartbeat.

He sang another. A sweet gentle song of hope but it was almost like a lullaby. She couldn’t help it and let her hand slide between him and the guitar.

He pulled away and stood, placing the guitar gently against the couch.

“Oh, Christ, Danny, I’m sorry.”

She started to sob so he led her toward the bathroom, to clean her face but he had to steady her, one hand holding her arm, his fingers softly brushing past her breast.

She leaned a little more and bumped his hip. It made him stagger toward his bedroom so she did it again. They were both laughing by the time they fell across his bed.

“We can’t, Billie. It’s not right.”

“I don’t want to have sex with you. I just want you to hold me.” She nestled across his chest, her face next to his. “I just want to kiss and stuff. Nothing that we ever have to feel guilty about.” She reached up with her lips but he pulled back and pushed her away.

“Fuck’s sake. We can’t, Billie. Don’t ask me to do stuff like this. I can’t do something like that to Deirdre.”

He turned and left and slept on the couch. She snuck out when the subway opened and they avoided each other for a while.

She stayed away from the Windsor for two months before she could face him again.

“How ya?” he smiled from the bar, the night she finally walked in.

“Listen, Danny,” she brushed her hair behind her left ear so she could look up into his face. “I’m really sorry about what . . .”

“Don’t worry about that. What harm was done?”

“I couldn’t face my best friend for months.” she smiled back.

“Come here to me.” He hugged her roughly and ordered her a beer and they were back to normal by the time the bar closed.

“I’ll only see you to subway.”

“Aren’t you worried about me alone on the train?”

“I’d be more worried if I had to go with you.”

“Listen, Danny Boyle. You’re not that cute.”

“You didn’t think so on Paddy’s Night.”

“What can a colleen say? Sometimes I overdo the Irish thing. Sue me.”

“Go on then, while you still have a handle on your libido.”

She dropped her token and brushed through the turnstile but she did turn and blow him the sexiest kiss she could manage. He caught it, too, and held it to his heart.

They were fine after that and she started dropping by his place on Sunday afternoons, just as a friend again, and listened to him play. They spent hours drinking coffee and smoking up a little. He’d sit on the couch and she’d sit on the floor, across from him. Sometimes, she’d even clap when he finished but it only seemed to distract him, so she stopped.

His songs were good and getting better. He re-worked every one and she listened to each improvement. She told him he was good enough to play in coffee shops and places like that. She even offered to introduce him to people who knew people, but Danny wasn’t sure and wanted to start somewhere more familiar.

He finally arranged a gig at the Irish Center and pleaded with her to come for moral support.

She did and it was a total disaster. The crowd was like her parents, older, having come over in the fifties and sixties. They weren’t there to hear what was new from Ireland. They wanted to hear the songs from their day and Danny didn’t know any of them. But they were a good-natured crowd and just talked and laughed through every song he sang.

While Danny was recalling the last night of some poor unfortunate that got mixed up in the drug scene—he made him sound like another martyr for old Ireland—they asked after each other and their children. Some openly boasting and some putting-on-the-poor-mouth, even as they paid for their drinks from wads of freshly minted dollars. They worked hard for them and they knew how to enjoy themselves.

As Danny switched and tried to sing songs they might know, they just grew louder until Danny couldn’t be heard at all. He kept going, though, with sweat streaming down his face and darkening his armpits through his lime-green t-shirt.

Because no one else would look at him, he stared at her, sitting alone at a table in the front row, putting her in the spotlight where she could suffer along with him.

In time a small man with a big accordion joined him on stage and the whole crowd got up to dance. They danced jigs and reels, foxtrots and waltzes without ever changing gait. They were all the same to them and the small man played on and on.

“What key?” she could hear Danny’s loud whisper as he tried to join in.

“B-Flat!”

Even Billie could tell it wasn’t, but Danny fumbled with his capo until he found the key. That was when she started to have real feelings for him—when she glimpsed him as he really was—a voice crying in the wilderness.

“Would you consider coming home with me?” he had asked on the cab ride back, his voice sadder than she had ever heard.

“Do you really think I should?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because Deirdre’s never going to be coming over. It’s over between her and me.”

Jerry had a great afternoon, sitting in the pub picking horses. He had a three-cross-double come in but he only had a few pounds on it. Still, it paid over two hundred and he was in the mood for a night on the town. He’d take Jacinta for a meal and a few bottles of wine but the lights were all out when he got home and the house seemed empty.

“I’m home,” he called into the darkness as he reached along the wall for the light switch.

The breakfast dishes were still on the table and the house was cold. Jacinta usually had a fire going by now. “I’m home,” he repeated as he wandered into the living room.

She was sitting on the couch in the dark with a half-empty sherry bottle on the coffee table.

“Ah, Jaze, Jass, what are you doing sitting in the dark? I thought you might have died on me.”

“I may as well be dead, Jerry. I’ve done a terrible thing.”

Jerry sat down opposite her and lit a cigarette. He should have known better—God never gave with the one hand but he didn’t take away with the other. “What’s the matter with you now?” He didn’t mean to sound impatient but he couldn’t help it, even after all these years.

“I got a call from Danny that’s after upsetting me.”

“What’s he done now?”

“It’s not his fault, Jerry. It’s mine.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“He told me that he has met someone—a Canadian someone.”

“And why’s that a bad thing. He’s a good lookin’ lad. He was bound to meet up with someone.”

“But don’t you see? He’ll never come back now.”

“But how’s that your fault?”

She looked up at him with tears rolling down her cheeks as she pulled a cigarette from his pack. Her own pack was empty and the ashtray was full. “I was the one,” she said, pausing slightly, “who told him that the young Fallon girl wasn’t interested in him, and now he has gone and got someone who is probably giving him sex and he’ll never want to come back.”

Jerry might have laughed. “Ah now, Jass, I think you’re getting a bit carried away.” He was about to say something else when he noticed her pills on the cushion beside her. She normally kept them in the bathroom cabinet. “What are those doing there?”

“I must have brought them down and forgot about them.”

Jerry reached for them and opened the lid. He always kept an eye on her medicine just in case she forgot herself and took too many. “You weren’t thinking of doing anything stupid, were you?”

“Ah, no, Jerry, don’t be thinking that. I’m not mad anymore.”

He said nothing for a while and they smoked in silence, both knowing the other knew what they knew.

“I’m so sorry, Jerry. I’m so sorry I turned out like this. Your mother was right about me.”

“She was,” he lied. He had to; he had to say something that would turn her away from the darkness. “She said that you were good to her to the bitter end.”

“Did she really?”

“She did. And you know Nora. If you ever think about doing something like this she’ll come back and haunt sense into you.”

“She did before but it wore off.”

“If you don’t promise that you’ll never think of doing it again, I’ll hold a séance.”

“I promise you, Jerry.” She waited until his eyes began to soften and reached for his arm. “I don’t suppose that you would make me a cup of tea now?”

“What are you going to do?”

Jerry had confided in Gina, and she in Donal, but they all agreed it would go no further. Jerry had told Jacinta to have them over on Sunday and, as was pre-planned, he and Donal had to go out to get more cigarettes while the women shared a pot of tea. Normally, Jacinta would have caught on but she seemed to want to spend some time with her sister and Donal and Jerry were happy to make themselves scarce.

“Jeeze, Donal, I don’t fuckin’ know. This is the last thing I needed right now. Should I have called the hospital?”

“No! You did the right thing. You don’t want your poor wife to die of shame. But don’t worry, you probably saved her life.” He placed his arm on Jerry’s. “You’re not afraid that it might happen again?”

Jerry paused to light a cigarette. “I don’t think so, only Jacinta is not like Gina and the others you know? She’s a bit delicate and sometimes she does things because life gets to her.”

“Has she ever tried to do this before?”

He thought about it but he couldn’t tell him. That whole night was still a bit of a blur.

He’d been out having a few drinks and when he came home she went right for him. She was complaining about how hard it was for her with the baby and all. It never occurred to her that it was hard for him, too, getting used to it all. He probably should have tried to be a bit nicer but he was getting awful tired of her.

“I’ll take the baby,” she had screamed at him. “We’ll go down to the river and I’ll throw the two of us in and then you’ll be happy. You and your mother will be rid of us and you can all go back to being the big shots and everyone will be happy. Is that what you want?”

He should have said something else but he didn’t. “I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck what you do; just let me go to bed, will ya?”

He didn’t really mean it but he didn’t think that she really meant what she said either. He couldn’t believe it when she grabbed the child and ran out the door in her nightie. He ran after her of course, but she was screaming and carrying on until the Guards arrived and took the three of them to the station.

Fr. Brennan arrived with his mother a few hours later. They had talked it all through and were going to step in and do what had to be done. Jerry and Jacinta had no say in it and were packed off, him to England and her to the hospital and Danny went to live with his granny.

“You know, Jerry.” Donal nudged him when the silence had dragged. “You could be rich and get real doctors to look at Jacinta.”

“With what? I can barely afford aspirins on my wages.”

“And that, me-auld-flower, is what I want to talk to you about. You and I could be rich as kings soon and be able to treat our wives like queens.”

“Will I have to wear a fuckin’ crown?”

“You’ll be able to wear your arse for a hat if you like. When you’re rich you get to do what-ever-the-fuck you like.”

“And how are we going to get rich then?”

“You still handle contractors, don’t ya?”

“Ya. Why?”

“Well, you see, I know of a few rundown houses over on Lesson Street.”

“I’m not going to be a fuckin’ landlord’s agent. Not for all the gold . . .”

“Shut up, will ya? I’m not talking about renting them. The auld-fella who owns them is dying and his family won’t want them. We could fix them all up and sell them. It’s called flipping. Everyone over in London is doing it.”

Jerry nodded as he absorbed it all. “But come here to me. Where are you going to find the money to be fixing houses? Gina says you can’t even change the jack’s-roll.”

“That’s where you come in. I got the houses and you got the men and the material.”