Wandering in Exile (7 page)

After that, Jacinta was back to her usual self and tried to convince him that she had just gotten mixed up.

“I was just having a few drinks and I forgot if I had taken my pills. I must have taken them before because as soon as I took some more I didn’t remember anything. I’m so sorry for scaring you all like that but there’s nothing for anybody to be getting worried about.”

Jerry was more than happy to accept her explanation; he had too many other things to be thinking about.

And Jacinta never had to mention that Deirdre had come by to see her, too, to ask why Danny wanted nothing more to do with her. Jacinta had lied to her but Deirdre’s tears were like acid and burned all the way into her soul.

“Are you well, Mrs. Boyle?”

“Fair to middling, Mrs. Flanagan, but I suppose I shouldn’t complain.”

The two of them stood on the steps of the church as the winds swirled plastic bags up into the trees. They had seen each other often but they hadn’t really had a chat since that day in the priest’s house. Jacinta was ready to leave but Mrs. Flanagan had something to say. She just didn’t seem to know how to begin.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Jacinta asked nervously.

“I would like to have a little chat, if you can spare the time.”

“Of course, but not here in the wind. Let’s go over the road and have a cup of tea,” Jacinta offered and nodded toward the Yellow House, “or something stronger if you prefer,” she added as the two women linked arms and forced their way through passing cars.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about my Anthony,” Mrs. Flanagan finally announced after she had sipped her sherry and placed it carefully on the paper doily.

It took Jacinta a moment to remember what she had said. “Sure of course you would. You’d think on nothing else.”

“Well,” Mrs. Flanagan paused like she was measuring what she was about to say. “It’s no secret that my Anthony was no saint, but he wasn’t the worst of them either.”

“Not a bit of it,” Jacinta lied and wondered where Mrs. Flanagan was taking her.

“I know he got mixed up in things that would have been better left alone, but he wasn’t the only one.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Well, I have been praying to God because I know he hasn’t got to heaven.”

“Sure how can you be sure? Maybe he said a good act of contrition before . . .”

“Ah now that’s very nice of you to say, Mrs. Boyle, but I think he’ll be a while yet before he gets there.”

“You don’t think that he’s in Hell?” Jacinta asked as earnestly as she could. If there was any justice, and if God paid any attention to all the neighbor’s curses, Anto would have a front seat close to the fire.

“No. I have a feeling that he is going to have to stay in purgatory for a while.”

“Lord save us,” Jacinta answered because she could think of nothing else to say.

She didn’t believe in any of that anymore. All the grey days in the hospital had chased all that nonsense from her mind but she knew better than to say that aloud.

“What I was wondering,” Mrs. Flanagan said as she finally got to the heart of the matter, “was if you would have a word with your Danny about this?”

“And what can Danny do?”

“Well, if Danny was to remember him in his prayers, then the bit of good that Anthony did wouldn’t be forgotten.”

Jacinta almost laughed but controlled herself.

“You can rest assured, Mrs. Flanagan; he gets down on his knees every night and thanks God for sending Anthony to save him that night. He was just telling me that he wants to send flowers for the grave only he’s not sure how to send them from Canada.”

And before Mrs. Flanagan could unravel her story, Jacinta continued. “Let’s just have one more and we can chat a bit more.”

Danny was down on his knees all right, as he clung to the sides of the toilet bowl and hurled his insides out.

“Are you okay?” Billie called from the bedroom.

They’d been making love with wild, boozy, abandon when Danny got dizzy. At first, she seemed to think he was trying something new and bounced along on top of him. But soon he began to groan and sweat and rushed off before he threw up on the pair of them.

Every time he mixed hash and beer, it got the better of him.

“I’m fine,” he managed when he finally stopped retching and rose to splash cold water on his face. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He looked up at his reflection. His face was white and his eyes were red and bleary, but at least the bathroom had stopped spinning. He was so relieved at that he didn’t notice Anto standing in the corner of the mirror.

Fine me arse. You look fucked to me.

Danny shook his befuddled head. He had often heard the echoes of Anto’s voice in his nightmares while he flayed around in a distorted reliving of the night they shot Scully and the night they buried the dog. And the night Anto and the driver got theirs, but he had never actually seen him. He splashed more water on his face and looked again.

I’m still here and you’re still fucked.

Danny wanted to argue but he thought better of it. It was one thing to be seeing and hearing things, but it was another to answer them. He knew he couldn’t be having the DTs—he hadn’t been drinking that much, but he had been hitting the hash pretty hard.

Maybe he was having flashbacks. He heard about people having them and they were always bad.

Or maybe it was like all the stuff his granny used to go on about—the wages of sin and all that. Since that night in the mountains, every time he got stoned, it all came bubbling back up. He remembered his terror and the smell when he shit himself in the booth of the car.

And he remembered the shots—two, and then two more.

He hadn’t actually seen them die but when he replayed it in his mind, he saw every detail. Both of them falling and twitching until the second shots made them calm and disturbed a far-off dog in the quiet of the night.

He was still riddled with guilt like, somehow, it was all his fault, and no matter how much he dismissed it as his Catholic upbringing, he could never wipe that smear off.

At various times, when he was young and foolish and deep in trouble, he tried making a personal deal with Jesus—that he’d pray to him as God and they would forget about all the Church stuff. But, when the heat was off, he forgot about all his pleading and got on with his life. They all did. It was how everybody dealt with all the shit in their lives.

Denial, he’d often argue with himself when he was drunk or high, was the opiate of the masses. That and the false hope of forgiveness. Otherwise, when we’d really look at life, we’d all go off and commit hari-kari, or something.

He splashed more cold water on his face and wiped it with a towel, but when he looked up, Anto was still there. Anto-fuckin-Flanagan had come back from the bowels of hell like his own personal devil.

He had to be hallucinating and tried pinching himself but it didn’t make Anto disappear; it only made him smile.

I’m real, Boyle, so you better get used to having me around.

“Danny? Is everything okay?” Billie was standing on the other side of the door. He could hear her breathing heavily. She liked to go a little crazy whenever they made love.

“I’m fine, love. I’ll be out in minute.”

Love? Ya didn’t tell me you were in love, Boyle. And what happened to the Fallon one you were seeing before?

“Danny let me in, please?”

“Just a minute. I just got a bit sick but I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Y’er the last of the great romantics, Boyle. That girl just made mad, passionate love to you and what do you do? You almost vomit on her.

“Danny. Open the door. I’m getting worried.”

Danny checked himself in the mirror again. He was still white but he wasn’t so clammy anymore. He rinsed with mouthwash and put on some more deodorant and reached for the door.

Jazus, Boyle. Ya smell great. You smell like a bunch of roses that someone got sick on.

“Fuck you.”

“Danny. Did you say something?”

He didn’t answer but fumbled with the handle and slowly opened the door as Anto disappeared.

“Are you all right?” Billie’s voice was edged with concern and she reached out and took his hand in hers.

“I’m fine now.”

“You’re white as a ghost and you’re shivering.”

She led him back to bed and covered him with her warm body and pulled the covers around them. She laid her head across his chest and touched his skin with her fingers. “Your heart is racing.”

“I’m fine, so don’t be worrying. It must have been something I ate.”

“Danny?” she rolled away and sat up, holding the bedcovers against her. “You’d tell me if there was something wrong?”

She looked so concerned he was mad at himself for not being able to hack it. He felt like a lightweight. She had matched him drink for drink. And she toked up too. She must think he was a real bummer.

“I told you. I’m fine. I just felt a bit sick but I’m fine now.”

He tried reaching for her but she moved back. “Not now, Danny. Go to sleep.”

“I just want to know that you are here beside me, that’s all.”

She moved closer, but after he fell asleep, she moved back to the edge of the bed.

Still, she knew she was beginning to fall in love with him. It started the night he was on stage at the Irish Centre, when she had been dragged along for moral support. He looked so lost and alone she wanted to reach out and put her arms around him. She never told him that. He liked to act all tough—like nothing really got to him—but she was beginning to notice things.

It wasn’t just his shyness. There were things he just never spoke of. He didn’t mention Deirdre anymore. It was like she had been erased. And he never told her why he left Ireland even though he had often talked about growing up there and finding out that all he once believed had been lies. He didn’t complain about it, though. He made it all seem so matter of fact, like he was grown-up enough to know that everyone fucks up. Even his granny.

Billie wanted to know more and always encouraged him to talk about himself.

“But I don’t want to bore you with all my shite,” he’d argue.

“You’re just like my father. All you Irish are the same. You’re all bound up so tight. Nothing can ever penetrate. Even Freud said you were all impervious to psychoanalysis.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“We don’t need a doctor to tell us we’re fucked in the head; we’ve got clergy who’ll do it for free.”

“But you say you don’t believe in them.”

“I also don’t believe there is such a thing as well-balanced or well-adjusted. It’s all shite. Do you really think we’re supposed to be tuned like radios every time what passes for reality changes?”

“So you think we should all run around mad?”

“We do anyway. That’s why the Irish drink so much. We’re the only ones who know how mad we really are. That’s why we make such good poets and all.”

“God’s gift to humanity?”

He laughed at that and tried to hide behind self-effacement but she was beginning to know him better than that—big and bruised, shy and awkward.

“Well I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just saying that we know what’s really going on—just like the blacks. That’s given me an idea for a song, the ‘Growing up in Dublin blues.’ And in my first album notes, I’ll mention that it came to me while I was talking to you. You’ll be famous, too.”

She couldn’t help herself and smiled. He was full of it, but she wouldn’t want him any other way. Where her father had become dark and brooding, shying away in the basement and drinking himself to sleep while he listened to his old jazz records, Danny still had life and hope in him.

She kissed him slowly and passionately to let him know that she wanted to believe in him. Why not? He had as good a chance as any of them.

“What’s that for?”

“So you will remember me when you’re famous,” she laughed and turned away from him.

“Jerry? Do you have any regrets?”

He knew better than to answer without thinking. Jacinta didn’t want honesty—no woman ever really did. They only wanted to hear what they wanted to hear—assurances. He had no problem with that. Who wanted to know what their partner really felt? Who wanted to find out that they had wasted their lives on the wrong person?

“What do you mean?” He reached out for the wine and refilled their glasses. The garden was in late summer bloom around them and, when the rain held off, it was warm and lazy.

“You know, did you ever regret getting involved with me?”

“Not at all. What would make you ask such a thing?”

“Well it hasn’t all been rosy.”

“It’s not supposed to be, Jass.”

“I know that, but I was wondering how you were feeling about things.”

“To tell you the truth, I have never been happier—or as close to it as the likes of me can get.”

He lied of course but what else could he do. It was like his mother had said: He’d made his bed and now he was lying in it. Not that it really mattered anymore; he was as happy as the next man.

When he was younger, he thought it would be very different. Back then he thought he would get through university and go on to do something great in the world. He thought he might be the one to find the cure for something or the missing piece to a puzzle that had mystified them all for eons.

But as it turned out, he wasn’t really the learning type. “I’m happy, Jass, and that puts me ahead of most of them.”

“Are you really?”

“I am, and the big reason is that I’m smart enough now to know what’s really important.”

Jacinta lit up. She probably thought that he was referring to her and he did nothing to correct her. What he did mean was that he had come to realize that the plight of mankind was never going to be his concern. His purpose was to tidy up his own little corner of the world and look out for himself and those that depended on him.

Things were going well for him too. His boss was a total idiot and was useless without him. Jerry knew better than to let on he knew but he was the one they all came to when something needed to be sorted out. Even the higher-ups knew and came to him directly.

“That’s so nice to hear. Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like for you if we hadn’t . . .”

“But then we’d never have had Danny.”

Jacinta blew him a kiss and sipped her wine, her eyes shining above the rim of the glass. “Do you think he’s getting on okay?”

“Why wouldn’t he? Doesn’t he have my brains and your good looks? What harm could happen to him? Unless he wears himself out on all those Canadian girls.”

“Oh, don’t say that. I don’t like to think of him off alone. God knows what type of trouble he could be getting himself into.”