Wild with All Regrets, page 17
Mick advanced on Lucas, striking his head against the wall so hard he almost lost consciousness. “Don’t . . . don’t touch him . . . ” He watched his father apply a tight cloth bandage to his leg and stagger out the door. “No . . .”
Lucas tried to follow him, but he was dizzy and disoriented. He slid against the rough wood of the wall and weakly called for his mother. Perhaps she had waited until Mick was out of the picture before she tended to her ailing child, cradling his head in her lap.
“Lucas! Oh, thank God you’re all right. I thought . . . ”
Yes, his Ma was there, after all. She sniffled a little, stroking the hair out of his face.
“Where were you last night? What did your father say?”
Lucas groaned, running his hand through his hair and finding it caked with dried blood. “Oh . . . oh no . . . I have to . . . ” Lucas struggled to his feet, feeling nauseous and disoriented.
“Baby, no,” Molly cautioned gently. “I don’t want to lose you, honey, please.”
Jessie started crying, and a pained expression crossed Molly’s face.
“Lucas . . . please don’t do anything stupid,” she begged, moving slowly to get back to her sick little girl.
Lucas saw his chance and slipped out the door once her attention had shifted, running as fast as his legs could carry him to Jamie’s grandmother’s house. Deep down, he knew Mick didn’t know where Jamie lived but . . . He was a vengeful, miserable prick. It wouldn’t take long to locate a rich barrister’s house in this part of town.
“Please be okay. Please be okay. Please, please, for the love of Christ don’t let that bastard have found him . . . ”
He pressed his face to the window and let out a sigh of relief when he saw Jamie, his father, and his grandmother, all gathered peacefully around the dining table. John’s left eye was nearly swollen shut, and he had a different pair of eyeglasses on, but he seemed none the worse for wear, really. Jamie was sticking very close to his father, not smiling broadly like he had been for the past day, but not traumatized, at least. Seemed like, anyway. Thank God.
Lucas shut his eyes and moved away from the window. His father was an ass, but he was right that he couldn’t be a part of Jamie’s life. They were from two different worlds. Lucas couldn’t even imagine a man like John raising a hand to a woman or a child. And Jamie was better off being away from people like Mick, away from gutter rat charity projects like Lucas.
He threw up in the street as he walked home; his head was hurt much worse than he’d realized. To hell with it, he’d manage somehow. Molly hadn’t noticed that he’d left, thankfully, and he curled up next to Becky in the little bed that they shared.
Mick staggered home a few days later, his leg more or less healed, the grudge still fresh in his mind. He blamed the injury and didn’t work for weeks; it was a hard bloody winter. Lucas was glad to pick up the slack, and had to take up a route as a newsboy, a chimney sweep, and any job a tiny boy could manage.
Little by little, he tried to put Jamie out of his mind. He wanted to forget about the Murray’s house in the country, the picnics with his family, that halo of light that had made the boy’s golden hair shimmer under the glow of the streetlamps. Lucas had to grow up quickly, for the sake of his siblings. But he kept Jamie nestled in his heart. The sweet, gentle little boy who had taken him in out of the rain and made him feel safe and loved. Jamie had the kind of life he only dreamed of, the sort of warm security he wanted for his family. Lucas had never dared to keep something like that in his heart before; an ideal to strive for, a dream to hold onto. He wouldn’t let that go for anything.
1918
Angela hadn’t been lying to him. There was no court-martial, he wasn’t hanged, and he wasn’t dishonorably discharged. Lucas did everything he could, but in the end, he wasn’t given permission to find his best friend’s body. It killed him. It fucking killed him to leave Jamie behind.
Jamie, like many others, was laid to rest in a mass grave in foreign territory and was lucky that anyone had bothered to place earth over him at all. Lucas fought them every step of the way, all he wanted was a chance to . . .
“To do what, Lucas?” Angela had asked him after he’d needed to be physically restrained in his bed once more. “To go to some mine infested hellhole, pull back the mud with your bare hands, and . . . and what? Go through all the mangled corpses one at a time until you found Lieutenant Murray? You could try for a hundred years; you’d never find him.”
He knew she was right, but on some level felt she must have been exaggerating a little. Surely the bodies of soldiers weren’t treated with such disrespect, surely someone would know— he just . . .
“I promised him I’d keep him safe, Angie. I promised I’d get him home.”
He thought of Jamie’s body alone in the mud, his lonely spirit wandering the Belgian fields and wondering where Lucas had gone. Christ, maybe he was an angry ghost out for revenge— maybe all he wanted was to throttle Lucas for ending his life. Lucas would have let him though; God knew he deserved it. If he’d only been patient, Jamie would have . . .
He shut his eyes and wondered what would happen if he defied orders and went searching for Jamie’s remains. He could see his fingers in the earth, tearing up the soil and digging through the corpses until he found Jamie: mottled, rotting, cold. Lucas felt sick imagining him like that, and wondered if he would have had the stomach to face Jamie now. The hole in his chest . . . his flesh stiff and malodorous, his glassy eyes still open, that little look of betrayal still etched on his face . . . I’m coming for you Jamie, I’m not going to leave you here, even if—
“Lucas, you have to let it go.” Angela put her hand on his and squeezed gently, pulling him out of his spiraling obsession. “His body is just a body, he’s not in it anymore. His soul has left this awful place and is probably watching over you from a cloud in heaven. Please. Please don’t do anything stupid.”
She was right. She was right. Lucas felt the last remaining part of his heart crumbling as he acknowledged the truth: Jamie was gone. There was nothing meaningful left of him, and no amount of impossible suicidal grave desecration was going to change that. As much as Lucas wanted to punish himself, to at least make it feel like he was trying to do right by Jamie, the fact remained that he would never, ever be clean of this heinous deed.
Lucas had been a bit of a heretic for a number of years now, and wasn’t sure he believed in God or souls at all . . . but if there was such a thing, he and Jamie would never be meeting one another again. His sin of murdering Jamie had surely condemned him to hell, and he could accept that. He’d made his choice, after all.
He was discharged in due time, awarded a medal for bravery or heroism or some bull he didn’t care about.
Angela went with him back to Dublin, but did have her own life to get sorted out.
“Promise me you won’t kill yourself as soon as I leave you alone.” She pinched Lucas’s cheek. “I’ll be in touch. I love you, okay? Life is worth living, you are worth saving, and I’ll always be here for you.” She kissed his forehead and left him alone in the street.
Lucas had two stops to make today, deciding to get the easier one out of the way first.
He made his way to the sadly familiar Henrietta tenements where his surviving siblings still resided. It made it easier to find one another again after the war and everything that came with it, Becky had suggested, if they stayed in the same place.
Lucas braced himself and knocked on the door, completely unsure of where his keys had gotten to. Jessie opened the door and squealed when she saw her big brother.
“Becky! Mattie! It’s Lucas! He’s back!” She threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed him all over his face.
“Hey there, little fish,” Lucas said softly, chuckling. “Miss me, eh?”
Ugh, it felt weird to be here. It hadn’t been his home in such a long time but he could hardly go back to Jamie’s flat now. It dawned on him that he didn’t really have a home anymore.
“Of course, you dafty! We were starting to assume you’d run off and joined the Belgian chocolate-making society!”
“They made me a very tempting offer. But I said no, I have a little sister who needs someone to pinch her cheeks now and again.” He pinched her and looked toward the hallway, surprised his other siblings hadn’t made an appearance.
“Is Mattie . . .?”
“Becky’s with him. It—it just takes time.”
Lucas nodded and followed his little sister to Matthew’s corner of the flat, which was dark and smelled like . . . death, an odor Lucas was all too familiar with by now.
He’d heard about what had happened in vague terms. “Caught under heavy fire, Patrick Connolly lost in battle, Matthew Connolly suffered severe injuries to his face and limbs.” Lucas had been avoiding this moment, unsure he could bear seeing how badly his brother had been wounded. He’d been so wrapped up in his own grief with Jamie that he hadn’t even had time to send a card.
“Mattie? Lucas is here, petal,” Becky said gently, opening the curtains for him. “Do you want to see hi—I mean, do you mind if he visits?”
Light bathed the room and Lucas covered his mouth with his hand when he saw just how bad “severe injuries” really were. His brother’s face was covered in gauze, a sickly yellow-red fluid soaking through much of it. He’d never see again, they’d told him. The gas had burned his eyes beyond saving, and the last thing he’d seen was his twin brother choking to death. Just peeking out from the borders of his bandages were the margins of normal skin, meshing with the thick and red ruined mess that made up the majority of his face. Matthew’s hands were mangled, too, maybe not beyond use but . . . He was seated in a wheelchair, his left leg ending abruptly in a tight mess of gauze and dried blood where his knee should have been.
“Mattie,” Lucas managed, his throat suddenly dry. What on earth could he say to him? ‘Looking good?’ Christ. “Long time no see—I mean—”
Matthew managed a little smile. “Lucas, calm down. Life is hard enough without avoiding any words related to vision, yeah? Sit, sit. Let’s catch up. I bet you look like shit, right?”
Becky’s shoulders sagged a little with relief. Mattie seemed all right with everything, more than all right. “I’ll let you boys talk. And yes, Lucas looks like shit,” she said pleasantly, going to join her sister by the stove.
“Fuck off, Becks,” Lucas muttered, smiling a little anyway. His facial muscles felt tired and out of use, but he had to admit it was sweet to be with family again. Jamie’s family would never see him again; Jamie’s family would never get to smile like this. He’s dead and it’s your fault, you killed him, you killed him, you—
“Lucas?” Mattie said suddenly. “Can you open the window for me? I hate the way it smells in here.”
Lucas nodded, then remembered Matthew couldn’t see him. “Yeah, sure.” He cracked open a window. Christ, the alley piss smells better than Mattie’s bandages.
“So . . . ” Matthew began, as though used to making small talk to people horrified into muteness by his injuries. “How was the war?”
Lucas laughed a little abruptly, a single cough-like noise that fell flat in the stale air of the room. “A bit shit, honestly. And how was it for you?”
“’Bout the same.” Matthew’s whole body tensed. .
“Mattie, what’s wrong? Do you need an analgesic?”
“I can’t. The girls spend enough on me as it is,” he hissed, breathing in and out slowly and steadily to calm himself.
A few moments of silence passed between them; Lucas didn’t know what to say. Yeah, Jamie was dead. But complaining about that in the face of Mattie’s injuries seemed disgusting. Lucas envied Jamie for being gone, for being free . . . but no man envied Matthew.
“Lucas, say something,” Mattie implored. “It hurts. Say something. Anything. Take me out of my head for a goddamned second.”
“Jamie’s dead,” he blurted out, mostly because that was the only thing he had thought about for over a month.
“Oh . . . Lucas.” Mattie’s mouth opened a little, then closed. “How bad was it?”
Was he maimed? Was he burned? Was he cast into blindness and terror before you walked home without a fucking scratch on you?
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said. “I don’t know what to say, Matthew. Tell me how I can help you.”
“Jesus, Lucas. Just don’t . . . don’t pity me like this. Be normal with me. Tell me I’m an ugly fucker, tell me nothing changes between us.” He laughed; his whole body shook as his laughter gradually morphed into sobs.
Could he even cry anymore? Did he have eyeballs? Little shriveled balls of rubbery uselessness or just empty holes where his smoky gray eyes used to be? He was only nineteen . . .
“I’m scared, Lucas. The world is empty; my body is broken; my twin is gone. No woman’s gonna love me like this. They said I’ll live; they said the infection probably won’t kill me.” He hiccupped a little, his mangled hands clawing at the bandages near his face. “Is God punishing me?”
What was his brother thinking? Was the injustice of it all clawing at his throat and threatening to emerge as a scream? Why me and not you, Lucas? Why me and not you, you abdicating sodomite coward? You shoulda been there, you shoulda been with us and not with him!
“No, Mattie,” Lucas said. “Ma’ woulda said He’s testing you. You . . . you’re lucky to be alive.”
“Fuck you, Lucas. You don’t believe that.”
“You’re right.” Lucas sat down beside him and put a gentle hand on his knee. “Being alive is fucking hard. I can’t imagine how much harder it is for you now. But I’ve been thinking about mortality a lot recently. We’re the soldiers who made it home, Mattie. It’s our responsibility to live for the ones who didn’t. To keep Pattie and Jamie alive in our hearts because no one else is gonna do it. No one else knows what we know, how they lived, how they died . . . that they mattered.”
Matthew was silent as he listened.
“I tried to shoot myself when Jamie died,” Lucas added. He hadn’t admitted that to anyone, not even Angela. “I had the gun in my mouth. It was out of bullets. I asked my friend to help me kill myself when I woke up in the hospital, too. I know you have it so much worse than I do. I know I shouldn’t even be talking about this . . . but I decided to keep living. I don’t deserve the peace that an eternity in hell would grant me, I don’t deserve to stop suffering. But you . . . ”
He looked at his brother. Life felt like a punishment, sometimes. For Lucas, he’d accepted that as penance for his sins, but Matthew hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t deserve to suffer like this. Mattie wouldn’t even be able to shoot himself if he wanted to; his hands didn’t work right.
“I . . . I can set you free, if you want. I’m already going to hell.”
“Fuck you, Lucas. Get away from me,” Matthew hissed, wrenching his leg away from his big brother’s grip. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Lucas shook his head. “I wish I knew. I’m sorry, Mattie.”
“Rebecca! Get him out of here!” Mattie hollered, hissing in pain as the words left him. “He’s a monster!”
Becky turned to face them and gave Lucas an apologetic look. She seemed used to these outbursts. Silently, she guided her oldest brother out of the room and gave him a hug.
“He needs time,” she said. “Can I make you some tea?”
“No. I’ll be in touch,” he lied. How could he face any of them now? His misery paled in comparison to what Matthew was enduring, and the girls were going to be burdened with him for the rest of his life. Now he’d bared his murdering heart to his only remaining brother, and had offered to violate the Fifth Commandment on his behalf. Their lives were dark enough without the shadow of his evil looming over them. Lucas hugged his sisters and collected himself. Then he left, away from his family in the wretched part of Dublin, and toward—where?
He couldn’t put it off forever . . . he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Slowly, he made his way back to the enormous flat that he used to share with Jamie.
Fuck.
His hands trembled as he put the key in the familiar lock, and he braced himself for the inevitable agony of his home with Jamie . . . without Jamie. He opened the door and it hit him all at once. The place smelled like Jamie; his clothes and books were everywhere. Lucas could almost imagine Jamie waking up, sniffing the air, and wondering where the hell his breakfast was. It felt like life would stop now that Jamie wasn’t in it . . . but the world kept spinning, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He went to the table and began sorting out their massive pile of mail. It was pretty straightforward. Lucas didn’t get much post, and he’d figure out what to do with everything addressed to Jamie at some point. Strangely, there was a letter for him near the top of the pile, with a neat feminine script playing across the envelope. It wasn’t Angela; it wasn’t his sisters. Curiosity got the better of him and he tore the envelope open.
Dear Lucas,
Sorry to send you a letter out of the blue like this—my mind is all over the place. If you’re reading this, you must be back at the flat. Jamie loved that place, didn’t he? Lucas, you’re more than welcome to stay in the flat as long as you want, I don’t know what else I could do with it. John probably would have wanted to sell it but . . . I can’t really put you out like that, can I? Not after the good friend you’ve been to Jamie all these years.
Oh, Lucas, I feel like I know you. Jamie loved to talk about you whenever he visited home. He thought you were the greatest man in the world. Jamie loved you so much, and I know this loss is likely hitting you pretty hard, too. I’m so sorry, Lucas. I’m so sorry you had to be there, to see it happen. It must have been so horrible for you. I can’t even imagine. His superior said he didn’t feel any pain—he wasn’t lying, was he, Lucas?
There were little tear stains on the document, and Lucas tried ignoring them.
