The Language of Remembering, page 8
You get up to go to the toilet and in the corridor you bump into Rebecca. She is red in the face and laughing.
‘Your wife is so gorgeous.’
‘She is. Most people ask how on earth I was able to get her!’
‘Well, that’s stupid. You’re a catch.’
You smile and she smiles back.
‘I was thinking, we might meet for a coffee or something? I could use your help to be honest, to find a job.’
‘Of course, sure you have my number.’
‘I do, yeah.’
You hug her, then go to the toilet. While pissing, you wonder why you hugged her. Was it because she said you were a catch, or that she didn’t seem surprised at all that you would end up with someone like Nina? Or something else you don’t even want to think about. You flush the toilet and look in the mirror before going back out and talking drunken words to drunken acquaintances. During the rest of the night, you and Nina just seem to be at odds with each other. Everything she says you take the wrong way, everything you say comes out wrong. There is music playing and people start to dance. You want to but decide against it. You go and get another pint and when you turn to go back to find Nina, Leon is dancing close to Rebecca. He is stiff. It is as if his body does not belong to him; something between his brain and his limbs is broken. You go back to the group and smile at Rebecca and shout over the music, you’ll have to teach him a few things! Then you laugh and move back to Nina. She takes your hand and pulls you away from the music and into the hall.
‘You’re very drunk!’ She says in Portuguese.
‘As are you.’ You respond too quickly.
‘I’m fine. Do you want to stay?’
‘Of course, why?’
‘You’re just acting a little weird? You’re coming across as a bit of a dick.’
‘Me! Why, ‘cos of Leon? You don’t even know him.’
‘No, exactly. I don’t. Do you?’
‘I knew him!’
‘Very different things.’ She walks into the toilet and closes the door. You walk back to the doorway of the kitchen and Rebecca and Leon are scoring, his arms around her lower waist. You see him pushing against her. You turn around and walk to the front door. Outside, a few people you barely know are smoking.
‘I couldn’t steal one, could I?’ you ask to any of them.
Somebody gives you one and lights it for you and you say, sound. You walk past them to the front garden and look at the estate. All the perfectly mowed lawns. The BMWs, the Audis. You watch the smoke leave your mouth and plume into the dark sky. You think of all the other lives you could be living. If you were born elsewhere. Or even in the same place, the same moment, but your dad didn’t die, or did die, but you were able to overcome it; the life you’d live if you never went to Brazil, if you never had a child; the life you’d live if you had studied for the Leaving Cert; the life you could have if only you knew who you were and what you wanted. You are annoying yourself. Your voice inside your head is screechy and irritating.
You flick the cigarette down the driveway and see the amber sparks scatter. Back inside, Nina is by the door of the kitchen.
‘Have you been smoking?’
‘Just one. I’ll call the taxi.’
‘Ok.’
‘I’m sorry,’ you say.
‘For what exactly?’
‘I don’t know, everything, maybe nothing.’
‘Just call the taxi. I’m gonna head in.’
You take the phone from your pocket and you have 64 WhatsApp messages. You open the app quickly just to make sure none are from Katie. Then you call your man from the taxi rank and ask if he could pick ye up sooner.
‘Well, I’m around that area there now, would ye be ready to leave right away?’
‘Yeah, that’d be great.’
‘Right so, see you there shortly.’
‘Thanks a mil!’
You go in and give Nina the nod. She stands up and you can see she’s going to start saying goodbye to everyone so you go over quickly and whisper in her ear.
‘Better to just leave. Otherwise it’ll take forever.’
You both walk out and into the corridor. Nina looks under the stairs where all the jackets are hanging in the wardrobe. You wonder if there is a specific name for that space, not a wardrobe, but ... there is a memory just out of reach with the word and your mother. You see her face flash before you. Nina hands over your jacket and you both walk into the night and stand at the front gate, your breath flinging out condensation, the two of you standing a short distance apart. You want to talk and just as she goes to say something the lights of the taxi pull up next to you and you open the door for her and then sit in. Fio and Brian’s house gets smaller and smaller as you look out the window.
‘Is your da here?’
‘He’s out walking.’
His fingers moved up and down her fingers, softly, as if he was stroking the hand of an old, sick person. Brigid looked at the fireplace, the soot on the beige tiles that her parents had fought over. Her da saying how it was the most stupid colour ever for tiles for a fireplace. Her mammy saying how anything dark would make the place look morose, and how the house was sombre enough in winter. Brigid counted a row of tiles.
‘I don’t know what to say, Bridge.’
‘Sorry, for a start.’
‘I’m sorry. Obviously, I am.’
She turned and looked at him. His hands were in his lap now and he was bending his fingers back, pushing hard at the knuckles.
‘Will you stop that, you’ll only end up hurting yourself.’
He looked at her and she noticed his eyes were bloodshot and the skin by his cheekbones was pink and scratchy. She turned, lifting her legs onto the sofa to face him. He was still in the school uniform but the top buttons on his shirt were open. He looked very young to her, like a boy, really; a boy who for the first time realised the world was not made for him, that there were larger, moving entities more important and more powerful.
‘I don’t know what to say or what to do. Really, I feel like I can barely breathe, Bridge.’
She wanted to shout at him and say, you, you can barely breathe! Wanted to show him the idiocy of his words. But she also felt the need to cradle him, to make him feel safe.
‘I know,’ she said, moving closer to him. ‘I know. Like the breath won’t really go in at all.’
‘Exactly.’ He turned at last and looked at her. He had such a beautiful face. So clean and so soft. She waited for him to say more but nothing else came. His hands would not stop moving and his right foot tapped out quick bursts of tension on the wooden floor.
‘I went to the doctor.’
‘O’ Mahoney?’
‘No, a different doctor in the city.’
‘The hippy?’
‘He’s not a hippy. He’s actually really nice.’
James rolled his eyes and she wondered was he jealous. She hoped he was.
‘And what did he say?’
‘There’s a scan scheduled for the fifteenth.’
‘Jesus.’
He stood up and went to the window. She looked beyond him at what he might be looking at. The slope of the fields that not long from now would be scattered with tractors, harvesters, plows and harrows. And then the fields would turn different colours, a quilt-work of barley, maize, beet and potatoes. She knew he was no more thinking about what was to be planted and what would grow in the fields. There was something about the cyclical, about the certainty of growth each year that calmed her.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Brigid said, not moving from the sofa, but pulling her legs in under each other so she sat as if ready to meditate. ‘It’s like you’re blaming me for all this.’
‘I’m not,’ he said. He did not turn from the window but spoke to it so she could see his faint reflection looking back. ‘I just really don’t know what to do. I don’t want to force anything but like, would it not just be easier…’
He didn’t finish the phrase and she did not answer him. She let the silence of what he did not say fill the room. She wanted him to feel it, for it to descend on him, like darkness, or start at his feet like quicksand, wanted it to swallow him whole.
‘Have you thought about it?’ His head now looked down at his feet. She looked at his feet too hoping to see something else there but it was just his black shoes. One leg of the pants was stuck in his grey sock.
‘I have. And I won’t. I couldn’t.’
‘Ok,’ he said, turning and sitting back on the sofa, ‘fair enough.’
She had expected him to push it, to argue, to paint the sticky picture of their future. She was glad he didn’t because she did not want to be convinced; afraid she could be.
‘So, what’s there to be done?’ He looked at her. She wondered how he could be a father, with a boy’s face on him still. There were sparse little patches of stubble on his chin but none on his cheeks. They were still soft and smooth and his eyes were big and his cheekbones cut high and she moved over on the sofa and put her arms around him, her head resting on his chest. She could feel the warmth of his skin through the open shirt. He was clammy. His heart beat a horrible rhythm. She pulled away and put her hand on his chest.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m as lost as you. Mammy says we need to get married and we need to do it quickly.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening.’
‘Well, it is, James. It’s our own fault.’
‘I know, I know. I just can’t believe it is all.’
‘It’s the quandary we’re in.’
He shimmied a little away from her.
‘I just think,’ she said, her voice now a little higher, ‘that we’ll have to do what we have to do anyway, the sooner the better. Think about me for a second. Think of what everyone will say. Mammy says that at least if we are married there’ll be less talk.’
‘What, we get married in a week is it?’
‘No! Obviously not, but soon, like in a few weeks. I don’t know. But your parents need to know that’s the plan. If not my da will go there himself. I know he will.’
She knew, of course, that her da wouldn’t. That he could barely talk to James’ parents as it was. James stood up again and now paced the room as if measuring the length of it with his strides.
‘They’ll freak out. I’m scared, Bridge. Like, you don’t know how they can get.’
She stood up now, too, and walked towards him so they were standing in the middle of the room, face to face.
‘Honestly, James, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less about what your parents think or say or do. I care about us. I’m terrified, James. Terrified. And I need you. We have to be together, really now. I can’t be pretending anymore. It’s killing me.’
She could feel her face burning up and her stomach lurched so violently that it left her insides unsettled. He hugged her, his arms around her shoulders and hers around his waist.
‘Are you not happy, not even a little bit?’ she asked into his neck. He didn’t speak but squeezed her a little tighter, as if she’d know how to read the answer. The sitting room door opened and Kathleen’s head appeared, then her body. She stood with her arms folded across her chest. James and Brigid unfolded from each other and faced Kathleen.
‘Well James, you’ve got us all into quite the predicament.’
‘Mammy!’
‘Oh, sorry, did you get yourself pregnant?’
‘I’m sorry,’ James said, ‘I really am.’
‘A very small word,’ Kathleen said, sitting down on the sofa now, ‘for such a substantial wrongdoing.’
‘I know,’ James said, his hands rubbing at his thighs.
‘And your lovely parents, are they as dismayed as ourselves?’
‘His Da wasn’t home,’ Brigid said, standing a little in front of James. ‘He’s going to tell them tonight.’
‘Is that right? Well, you better be on your way. Do send them our best.’
Brigid walked out ahead of James and heard him say sorry again as he walked past Kathleen. They walked out the front together and James kicked the wall lightly, sending the pebbles from the roughcast in different directions.
‘God my heart, Bridge. Feels like it’s going to explode.’
She put her hand on his chest and could feel it, battering away.
‘I better go back in.’
‘Ok, I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For everything.’
They hugged and she whispered in his ear that it would all be fine, that she loved him. Again, he squeezed her tighter but didn’t say anything in response.
You wake with your phone ringing. It takes some time to realise where you are. As you answer it, your head drums a steady rhythm; your tongue is stuck to your palate.
‘Hello,’ your voice is thick with last night.
‘Hi, it’s Mary.’
‘Is everything ok? Is Mum ok?’
‘We’re at the hospital. She had a fall.’
‘Fuck, is she ok?’
‘She’s ok, she’s ok but she fractured her pelvis. And is very bruised.’
‘Oh, ok, ok. Which hospital are you in?’
‘C.U.H.’
‘Ok, ok, I’m coming. I’ll be there soon.’
You hang up as she is still talking and the drumming becomes more intense. You put your head in your hands and feel like puking. You go quickly to the bathroom and close the door. You kneel at the toilet bowl and cough but nothing comes. You are afraid to be alive. You try to place last night into a series of images that make sense. You cannot remember getting home. Did you fight? Should you say sorry? What if you said something horrible, what if Nina is thinking of leaving you, what would happen? Would she take Ailish back to Brazil?
You go to the sink and brush your teeth. You wash your hands and pat your face with water. Back in the bedroom, Nina is sitting up against the pillows.
‘Is everything ok?’ she asks, rubbing her eyes.
‘Mum had a fall.’
‘Oh no, is she ok?’
‘She’s after fracturing her pelvis.’
‘Seriously? The poor thing.’
‘I’m heading there now.’
‘Of course.’
‘Are we ok?’
‘We’re fine. We can talk about it later.’
‘Ok. Sorry for being a dick last night.’
‘We’ll talk later. Let me know once you’ve seen her.’
‘Ok.’
Nina sits in silence, scrolling through her phone while you get changed. You spray yourself with too much aftershave, hoping it will cover the smell of beer. You skip down the stairs, open the front door and it slams behind you. Shit, you think, please don’t wake Ailish. You go to the car but don’t have the keys. You have to knock on the front door for Nina to come down and open it for you. You say sorry, sorry, total idiot, sorry, grab the keys, go back to the car, start the engine and try to remember how to drive.
You are too hungover. Cars move in slow motion or in fast forward. There is no in-between. Your head is concrete mix. The fear is everywhere. You think of all the times you didn’t visit. The more she started speaking Irish the less you started going. You think of the beach yesterday, how happy she seemed, and then, it all just shifts. You fear that. The shift. Never knowing when it can come. Afraid of the silence between you both, the length and breadth of it, the sheer weight of it. Afraid of the anger that is a little stone inside of you. You picture a peach eaten down to nothing. Grow the fuck up, you say out loud, as you drive too closely to the car in front of you. And will you ever hurry the fuck up, you langball, you shout at the car in front of you.
You park the car and walk the distance to the hospital. The lights inside are too bright and the smell of cleaning products turns your stomach. You go to the desk and give your mother’s name. She is in a room on the fourth floor. You go up in the lift and regret it. On the second floor five people jam into the small space. You swallow hard many times until the fourth floor arrives and you leave, nudging your way through.
Your mother is propped up by pillows on the hospital bed. Her body looks painfully small underneath the white sheet. There are five other patients in the room, and nurses flit between beds, flipping charts and talking softly. Your mother’s face is looking straight ahead and she turns it only slightly and she looks at you, but her face does not change. She looks down at herself and flattens the creases in the sheet with both her hands. You hover at her bed.
A nurse looks at you and comes over close, whispering.
‘Are you James?’
‘No, I’m Oisín. I’m her son.’
‘Ah, ok, sorry. She has been saying that James was on his way.’
‘James was my dad, he passed away a long time ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you go over to her there and I can talk to you afterwards.’
‘Ok, thanks.’
You walk over only because you can feel the nurse’s eyes on you and you want to appear to be a son who is not afraid of what his mother is about to say.
‘Mum. Hi, it’s me.’
She reaches out her hand which you take in yours but she does not speak. When she turns her head to you, one side is swollen and bruised.
‘Mum, what happened?’
‘They’re probably still talking about me now, and for what? Such insincerity, such callowness. Well, we didn’t care, James and I. We didn’t let it touch us.’
‘Mum, Mary said you fell. Do you remember what happened?’
‘Mary? You probably mean Sarah-Kate, Mary was her sister. Now she was brazen, that little Mary. What a mouth on her.’
You cannot think of more words. You look around the room and across from the bed is a vase of flowers on a table against the wall.
‘See the flowers mum, what are they, lilies?’
‘Flowers! Let them have flowers if it’s what they want. Let them. It won’t unsettle me if that’s what they’re thinking.’
She continues talking but it is all in Irish and the words sound violent. You stand up and walk away and look for the nurse who spoke to you. You cannot remember her face. If you heard her speak, you’d know it was her but no image of her comes to your mind. You tap the shoulder of a nurse who is hunched over a chart. She turns to you.
