Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (39 page)

Which come to think of it is no harm.

I try to watch TV to take my mind off things and find
The Wizard of Oz
on TCM. The part where Judy Garland is clicking her red slippers together three times and saying, ‘There’s no place like home,’ over and over again, while a load of Munchkins look on.

It takes me back to what Mum said earlier. Is that what
I’m like now? A Dorothy who ran screaming from Kansas and who’s now slowly beginning to feel, ah sure what the hell, actually come to think of it, Kansas wasn’t all that bad really? That there really
is
no place like home? And the irony is that it took the Countess fecking Dracula for me to be able to see this clearly.

And then I realise with a jolt. It’s not that this Dorothy particularly wants to return to Kansas, thanks very much.

I just want to be where Dan is. But I’m too late.

When I eventually fall asleep, unsurprisingly, I dream about him. Like I’m somehow flicking through emotional snapshots of happier times.

There he is, still haunting me, even in my subconscious.

Our wedding day

Dan and I don’t do perfect, but that day was as close as either of us has ever come. To date, at least. We were ridiculously young, barely out of college, and so determined nothing would stop us, that all opposition and well-intentioned advice against our marrying was a total waste of everyone’s time. And believe me, there was a lot of it.

Pretty much as soon as everyone had recovered from the shock of our engagement, all the barneys about the actual wedding day itself started. Audrey and Dan Senior of course, wanted it to be in Waterford, held in the Stickens parish church, followed by a reception in a marquee at The Moorings afterwards, with half the town invited.

As for Dan and me, getting married barefoot on a beach at sunset in the Bahamas with not a relative in sight would have been our dream, but as he kept pointing out time and again, once I turned up to marry him and he turned up to marry me, then nothing else really mattered, did it?

And in the end, it didn’t. A hasty compromise was reached and we got married in University Church Dublin, with a small reception afterwards in the Shelbourne Hotel for about forty people. Jules was my bridesmaid and has since destroyed every photo in existence of herself on the day, on account of the fact that she was wearing train track braces at the time and reckoned she looked not unlike Hannibal Lecter in yellow taffeta.

By the day itself, Audrey was barely speaking to me because I’d politely declined her edict that I get married wearing her wedding dress, on the grounds that not only was it about five sizes too big for me, but also came with a giant hoop skirt made of tulle so stiff that I swear it actually stood up by itself. Walking in it made me look and
feel like a giant bell, so instead I opted for a simple Calvin Klein white silk sheath dress that clung well and most important of all, that I knew Dan would love.

But in spite of all the tension beforehand, for Dan and me the day itself was pretty close to perfection. Of course stuff went wrong: a pigeon flew into the church and pooed on some friend of Audrey’s flowery hat, to great sniggers from the rows behind her. Oh, and when Dan knelt down, you could still see the giant price tag on the back of his shoes.

But none of that mattered. When I walked down the aisle, on my mother’s arm as my father had refused to come (which would have been…ohh, let me see…yes, row number seventy nine), Dan bent down to tenderly kiss me with tears in his eyes.

‘Do you know just how heartbreakingly beautiful you look?’ he whispered, which of course was enough to start me off sniffling too.

Then as we took our vows and he locked eyes with me, solemnly promising to love me every minute of forever, it honestly felt like I was floating. And when I looked up to him and vowed to love and honour him all the days of my life, he bent down to kiss me again, a long, lingering kiss this time, well before the priest had given him the official nod to.

‘I love you, Annie,’ he said simply. ‘Always have, always will.’

Chapter Seventeen

The week passes quickly, too quickly. I hardly see Mum, but then she’s working ridiculously long hours these days and often doesn’t get back to the apartment till well past seven or eight most evenings. So I’ve taken to spending my days alone, dozing or watching TV, thinking about what in hell I’ll do when this is all over and the end of the year comes. Because quite apart from everything else, I’ll be jobless, homeless and husband-less, won’t I? And one of these fine days, I’m going to have to face up to that hard, cold fact and make some kind of contingency plan.

Just not right now. Not today.

Sleep has become my opiate, my drug of choice, my oblivion. Now the days have fallen into a kind of pattern; by the time I haul myself wearily out of bed at about eleven, often far later, Mum will have long gone to work, so that’s when I plonk myself down in front of the TV, bowl of Cheerios in one hand, remote control in the other and think, great. Only another two hours till Ellen DeGeneres.

One evening, when Mum comes home to find me still in my pyjamas in front of the TV not having washed myself or even gone outside of the door all day, she gives out to me for allowing myself to wallow, understandably enough.

‘You need fresh air and exercise,’ she says crisply, dumping down her briefcase on her desk and surveying the mess I’ve made in the living room.

‘I mean it, Annie, you can’t go on like this and what’s more I won’t allow you to. Tomorrow you’re leaving this apartment and doing a lovely tour of the city. The Potomac, the White House, Arlington cemetery, the whole lot. Then when you get back, we can have an intelligent conversation, like normal adults do. I don’t want to come home again and find you’re still here with nothing to talk about except some new diet product you saw on the Ellen Show called Skinny Cow.’

‘Ah come on, be fair. That only happened once.’

‘I mean it, missy. No more holing yourself up in here like Anne Frank. Tomorrow you’re going out and that’s final.’

Then she tells me that she’s not staying in this evening, instead she’s going out for dinner with a colleague and that I’m most welcome to join, if I want to. I pass, pleading tiredness, even though I’ve been sleeping for sixteen hours most nights. She doesn’t try to talk me into it and I have to say, looks really terrific as she heads off for her night out, in a neat black bespoke dress, impeccable make-up and a pair of stunning, red-heeled Louboutin shoes. She’s even had a blow-dry today too, I notice…and is that a manicure I see?

Something in the way she tells me not to wait up for her begins to rouse my suspicions. Slowly start to put two and two together as yet another memory is jogged. Why was she so dressed up to the nines the day I arrived, even though it was a Sunday, her day off?

‘Mum? This colleague you’re meeting tonight…is this by any chance…a date?’

The prim blush on her cheeks tells me everything I need to know.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted she’s met someone else; Mum has been on her own for so long that no one deserves it more. But as I fall into a deep, troubled sleep that night, one thought keeps rattling round my addled brain.

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, is the whole, entire world in love except for me?

Hard to believe, but the following day is my last before I’m due back for work, so I do as I’m told and become a tourist for the day. It’s a dry, windswept fall morning, perfect for sight-seeing and as DC is actually surprisingly compact, I cover a lot in the little time I have. Madame Tussauds, the Smithsonian, I even made it all the way up as far as the Lincoln memorial. It’s the best distraction I could have asked for and I hadn’t realised it, but it’s well past seven in the evening by the time I even think about getting back to Mum’s apartment.

The lights are already on when I let myself in, which is great – means Mum’s home. Then I hear voices coming from the living room and realise she’s not alone.

Oh Christ, don’t tell me. The new boyfriend?

‘Annie dear, is that you?’ Mum calls out. ‘We’re in here. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet!’

‘Two seconds!’ I yell back, straightening myself up a bit in the hall mirror and trying to smooth down the worse excesses of my bushy hair, now even wilder and more unkempt after a day exposed to the elements in the windy outdoors. Why, why, why couldn’t I have inherited Mum’s silky locks instead of a head of hair that needs a half can
of serum dunked over into it to avoid me looking like Side Show Bob from
The Simpson
s?

Two minutes later, Mum is introducing her new ‘friend’ who, by the way, goes by the highly improbable name of Henry Jefferson the Third. Turns out he’s a lawyer who’s now working in the White House as a special advisor to President Obama, or POTUS, as he keeps referring to him. He’s a bit older than Mum, pushing sixty, I’d guess, and short in height, bald as a coot but with the widest grin I think I’ve ever seen. Divorced too it seems, with kids a fair bit older than me.

Mum opens a bottle of wine which loosens everyone up and pretty soon, the stories start flowing too. In fact, after a while I begin to see exactly what it is that pulls Mum towards someone like Henry Jefferson the Third. He’s sunny and warm and a terrific raconteur to boot, full of funny, anecdotal, inside stories about his job that make me feel a bit like I’m in an episode of the
West Wing
. He’s also exuberant and full of fun and seems to bring out a girlish, giddier side to her. In fact, I almost feel like I’m chaperoning the pair of them and I think that Henry is really pulling out all the stops to impress her too.

Can’t wait to get Mum on her own later to give her the low down. But most importantly of all, to tell her that, for what it’s worth, I fully approve. Because no one deserves a bit of fun in their life more than my mother.

Absolutely no one.

Chapter Eighteen

So this, I suppose, is a happy ending then, at least, a happy ending of sorts. Which, as I’ve slowly come to learn, is the official American religion. Because, on the surface, everything appears to have worked itself out with frightening symmetry.

First there’s Mum and her new man, a definite happy ending there. She waved me off at the airport earlier this morning, hugged me warmly and advised me not to worry too much about Dan. That sometimes things have a way of working themselves out. Hard to believe from where I’m standing right now, and if I’m being honest, it all sounds like something straight out of
Forrest Gump,
but I did appreciate the sentiment.

Then some astonishingly good news: while I was away, it seems Liz checked herself out of the Albany clinic and better yet, she’s coming back to work tonight.

She’s waiting for me in the dressing room when I get in, with the most massive bouquet of flowers and a card that reads, simply, ‘Thanks for being a pal.’ I smile delightedly and hug her to bits, genuinely overjoyed to see her back, but if I’m being brutally honest…this all just seems a bit, well…
sudden.
And it has to be said, she’s still looking
worryingly thin and with that hollow-eyed gaunt look still etched on her pale, white face. Not what I would have hoped for, not by a long shot.

‘So aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she says, sensing that I’m holding back a bit.

‘Honey, I’m beside myself, but…what about the clinic? I thought they had you on a programme? That there was a whole course of rehab you had to go through…?’

‘Oh, babe, you have no idea,’ she says, rolling her eyes to heaven and shoving her feet up onto the dressing table. ‘You know, being stuck in that kiphole in the back arse of nowhere, surrounded by depressives was only making me, if anything, worse. They made me do group therapy, for feck’s sake. Me? In group therapy? Surrounded by a shower of cockheads all droning on and on and on, day and bleeding night. You want to have heard some of them, Annie; truck drivers from Idaho analysing the reason why they drank a litre of Jack Daniel’s a day and could it be because their wives didn’t understand them? Jaysus, I thought, if I was married to any one of them, I’d drink double that just to drown my sorrows.’

Then she puts on a note-perfect American accent and starts ripping off the psychiatrist in charge of her treatment.

‘“Hi, everybody, I’m Dr Goldman and I want to begin today’s session by welcoming Liz from Ireland and asking her to tell us her story.” No story to tell, I said. “Of course there’s a story, Liz: there’s
always
a story, so in your own time, feel free to tell the group all about your drug abuse. We’re here to love and support you and our little circle of trust is non-judgemental.” Then the bloody questions would start, like drill-fire. “So when did you first start using? And how much cocaine would you get through in
a day? And what was your lowest point? And why did you do it?” No reason, I said. I just wanted to have fun. “But how are your relationships with your family? Did you have an unhappy childhood?” You should have heard her, Annie, trying to turn me into some kind of fecking basket-case, like the rest of the losers in there. So I lost it. Just stood up and told her straight out that I had perfectly cordial relationships with both my parents and just took recreational drugs purely for the laugh. She told me I was in denial, which is stage one, so I told her to feck off, that I was going outside for a cigarette. And that was pretty much the end of that.’

OK, now I’m
really
starting to worry.

‘But, Liz, are you sure it’s wise to come back to work so soon? I mean, you’ve really been ill and to put all this pressure on yourself…’

‘Oh please, don’t you start. There’s absolutely nothing that’ll do me more good than to get back to work. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to Jack, of course, but like he said himself, who is he to argue with a Tony award winner? Besides, this gig is a walk in the park.’

But there’s something about her striding over-confidence that’s really setting off an alarm bell in my head. She clocks my anxious expression and pats my arm soothingly.