Long Story, page 28
‘Then why have you been waiting for him to call you so desperately?’
‘I guess I needed to believe that someone was going to come and rescue me! I wanted to truly believe that everything going wrong between Rory and me happened for a reason. That I was meant to be with Sean, and that’s why my life is currently such a mess. That I had taken a wrong turn and chosen the wrong life, not that I had fucked it all up so royally.’
Alex nodded slowly, the truth dawning on her. ‘And I’ve been using him as an excuse for never letting anyone else get close. Never wanting to get over him, because it would mean I had to move on. Look, Tara. There’s something I haven’t told you about me and Sean. I never told anybody except Darius, not even my mother. But … well, it’s just that …’
She looked so forlorn, I was just about to reach across the bed for Alex’s hand when all the machines started beeping.
‘Code blue!’ somebody called, and nurses immediately started rushing in with trolleys. I backed up against the window, feeling like time was standing still until a kid who barely looked old enough to be out of school appeared in front of me. ‘Ms O’Toole, I’m sorry but you can’t be here. I need you to wait outside.’
I nodded and obeyed, because he was wearing a white coat. Alex and I backed out of the room as our friend was swarmed with professionals trying to save his life.
32. Alex
Darius was taken into surgery. Dr Wilson’s ominous warning that his heart could burst in his chest had come to pass, so the doctors rushed him to the OR. Tara and I ran next door and roused Francisco immediately. My parents, Jen and Brian rushed back to the hospital in the early hours when they were woken up by our frantic calls. We were sitting nervously in the communal waiting area, desperate for an update. Dr Wilson had been paged and scrubbed in somewhere around 2 a.m.; by the time the sun was coming up, we were all in various states of huddling and pacing.
At 7 a.m. Tara’s stomach rumbled so loudly I heard it from across the room. I walked over to her then, ignoring the surprised looks from Jen and Mam. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat. I can’t stand sitting here waiting. Someone will call us if there’s any news. Right?’ I directed the last part to my mother, who nodded emphatically.
‘Go,’ she ordered. ‘It won’t do any of us any good if one of you collapses from lack of sleep or food.’
Tara grudgingly stood up and let me lead the way to the cafeteria on the mezzanine level, which was just opening. I ordered us breakfast bagels and extra-large coffees and then joined her at a table by the railings overlooking a huge window where you could see the day dawning outside. It all felt unreal, like we were in a long, unrelenting nightmare.
‘Darius is going to be okay, Tara,’ I said, beckoning for her to start eating.
‘He might not be okay, Alex. You have to face up to that.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Well, tough. Shit happens. You have to learn to deal with it.’
‘It’s not that easy.’ We lapsed into silence, both nibbling at our bagels. Mine tasted like cardboard.
‘Darius is like a dad to me, you know,’ Tara said suddenly. ‘When my father checked out, he became my parent even though I thought I didn’t need one. He was the one who came over and got me up in the mornings. I was so young and so scared, I don’t know what I would have done without him.’
‘You had me too, and my family. We were there for you.’
‘It’s not the same. You guys were a unit; everything you did was for each other. Darius and me, we didn’t have proper families of our own, so we clung to one another.’
Was she trying to make out that she was closer to our friend than I was? ‘Darius had Jen’s family, her dad was his brother …’
‘Darius had a brother who insisted on calling him Darren and never tried to understand him. Sometimes blood isn’t thicker than water.’
‘I love him just as much as you do, you know,’ I said.
‘It’s not a competition, Alex,’ Tara said gently. ‘We both adore him.’
‘But I’ve always felt in competition with you,’ I blurted out. This was the second time I’d had verbal diarrhoea with Tara in the past few hours; my defences were clearly kaput. ‘I always knew the competition was one-sided because you’re Tara O’Toole, you were going to win. So I think eventually I just decided not to even compete. What would be the point?’
Tara slammed down her bagel. ‘There you go again, giving up before you’ve even tried!’
‘There was never any room for me when your light was shining, Tara! It’s never been easy being your friend, you know.’
‘Bullshit. You just wrote yourself off early because you never had any self-confidence.’
That stung, probably because it was true. ‘You really think all my issues come down to low self-esteem?’
‘Yes!’ Tara cried, so loudly that everyone in the cafeteria looked at us. I could see a few faces peering over, wondering if it was really her.
‘You have never believed in yourself, Alex, and you’ve never been able to see yourself clearly. I was always in awe of your talent. Everybody was.’
‘Then why didn’t it feel like it?!’ I cried. ‘Nobody ever made a fuss of me! Nobody ever gave me any opportunities! I was always in your shadow.’
‘Oh my god.’ Tara’s mouth was gaping open. ‘You thought you were going to be handed a career!’ She shook her head resolutely. ‘Nobody is given anything in this business. You have to fight tooth and nail for absolutely every chance and nothing is ever guaranteed. But you try, if you love it. You keep trying.’
‘I wasn’t strong enough to try.’
‘No, you just didn’t bother.’
Her words hung between us, and I knew then that she was right. I didn’t bother trying to become an actress, because it felt too hard. I told myself I didn’t want to be a celebrity and I didn’t envy Tara’s lifestyle, but I could have gone a different route – Oliviers and Obies instead of Oscars and Tonys. The life of a working actor instead of a star.
‘You’re right,’ I admitted. ‘I wasn’t brave enough.’
‘It’s not too late, you know,’ Tara said simply. ‘It’s not over till it’s over.’
‘And what about you? Is it too late for you and Rory?’
She recoiled at the mention of his name but recovered quickly. ‘Rory has made his choice. He’s moved on. I guess I have to learn to be on my own.’ She drooped then. ‘I don’t know how, though. It’s so fucking scary.’
I took her hand. ‘You’re not alone. You have me.’
‘Do I?’ She looked right into my eyes.
Then I remembered I had one last thing to apologize for. ‘I’m sorry about Xavier. I think it was all this pent-up emotion just exploding in the face of someone being kind to me. I never meant to sleep with your stepson. It’s so fucked up.’
Tara sighed. ‘He’s a great guy, and he’s clearly mad about you. You like him, don’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘He’s lovely. He’s hot. To paraphrase the great Shania Twain, man, I felt like a woman with him.’ I smiled, but knew it didn’t reach my eyes. ‘But I’m so confused, Tara. I’ve never felt like this in my life. I don’t know what I want.’
‘It’s a mess,’ Tara agreed. ‘But one we can clean up, if we want to. Do you think we can get past it all?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said bluntly. ‘But you’ve just ripped me a new one for never trying. So I guess we can try?’
She gave me a watery smile, and my heart lifted ever so slightly.
Both of our phones rang then, at almost the exact same time. We stared at them, unwilling to answer and hear something potentially life-altering.
‘They’d text if it was good news,’ Tara whispered.
‘We don’t know that.’
Both phones fell silent, like defused timebombs. ‘They would text us now, telling us to come back. If they call again, it’s bad news,’ she said.
I couldn’t bear the tension, the next few moments feeling like hours and milliseconds all at once. Then the phones started ringing again.
33. Tara
Darius died at 7.59 a.m. on Saturday, 5 April. Dr Wilson and her team did everything they could, but his poor heart was too badly damaged to save and the doctors had to let him go.
Due to my eerie premonition, Alex and I had mutually decided not to answer our phones, instead walking hand in hand back to the waiting room together to hear the unbearable news in person. When we got there Francisco was doubled over in grief, wailing, with Jen holding him. Deirdre looked at us both with raw devastation written all over her face, and we knew then that Darius was really gone.
Thank god for Lorraine, who had arrived while we were in the cafeteria and was business-like in her grief. She had after all buried her husband recently enough; she knew what needed to be done. Brian was really helpful too – Jen hadn’t been joking when she said her undertaker husband knew the best morticians in New York City. He and Lorraine sprang into action, helping Francisco sort out paperwork, calling lawyers and basically taking the awful bureaucracy of death off all of our hands.
I’d barely let go of Alex since we got the news, and I was clutching her arm as we went in to see Darius one last time. He’d been tidied up, the wires and cables removed and the machines silenced. A kind nurse had combed his hair and he looked peaceful in a way he hadn’t the night before when his damaged heart was still beating.
And yet I couldn’t accept that Darius was actually gone; the finality was too overwhelming. The body didn’t seem real, more like a realistic movie prop than my dear friend. It all felt like a cruel joke.
Alex was white as a ghost herself, her skin and lips leeched of all colour. She clung to Darius, weeping, while I felt utterly numb. There are unreal times in life when an actress wishes she had a script to tell her what to do, and this was definitely one of them.
Eventually it was time to leave the hospital. Stepping out into the brightness and bustle of Madison Avenue was disconcerting: life was going on around us while I felt caught in between worlds.
‘Can we walk back to your place?’ Alex asked. ‘I need some air.’
‘Yeah, let’s go through the park. I mean, you’re obviously coming back to stay, right?’
Alex nodded. ‘If you’ll have me.’
We were both beyond tired, like zombies in sweatpants as we plodded the paths of Central Park towards West 76th. I pulled my baseball cap low on my head just in case – I couldn’t deal with a fan asking for a selfie.
It’s actually a really nice walk from Mount Sinai to my apartment, taking in some of the highlights of my favourite green space in the city. It was a bright, clear morning and spring was in bloom; there were daffodils burgeoning at the base of old oak trees and the branches were budding. It felt so strange to see a new season thriving while Darius lay dead and cold in a hospital morgue. I shivered, and Alex noticed.
‘It’s crazy, isn’t it? Life just going on without him.’
‘It’s utterly surreal.’
We walked in silence for a while. The route across the park took us past tennis courts where fit people wearing white were batting balls back and forth, and the waters of the reservoir shimmered in the sunshine. As we approached a playground full of boisterous children, I idled for a second, suddenly feeling winded. I felt Alex sliding sideways looks at me.
‘It was so good of Rory to organize the plane,’ she said.
‘It was good of Xav to ask him to.’
‘They’re top-notch guys, those Vaughans.’
‘Are you going to keep seeing Xav?’ I was blunt, too tired not to be.
‘I don’t know. Are you going to talk to Rory?’
When I didn’t reply, she continued. ‘I don’t think the door is closed there, Tara. He still cares about you too much.’
I’d been thinking the same thing, but my brain felt too full to give it any proper thought. So much had gone on, and everything was different now. ‘He’s a good, kind man, Alex. I’m not surprised he wanted to help. He loves … loved Darius too. I can’t keep thinking that every nice thing he does means he wants me back, and I don’t even know if I could forgive him. It doesn’t change anything between us, you know?’
‘What went on between you two seems to have been a terrible case of miscommunication. From my inexperienced vantage point, anyway.’
‘It’s not just that. I can’t give him what he wants, which is another child.’
‘You guys were fine before having a baby came into it. You said yourself, you wanted it more than Rory. Anyway, if he really, truly wanted to raise a baby with you, I don’t think it would matter how the child came to be. Somewhere along the way, you guys stopped talking and started guessing what the other wanted.’
I watched the kids whizz down the slide one by one. ‘Do you know the official name of this space?’
Alex looked at me quizzically.
‘The Diana Ross playground. As in, the Diana Ross. Only in New York, I swear,’ I said. ‘No wonder Darius loved it here so much – this city is as camp and eccentric as him.’
‘If you could have a kid tomorrow, would you do it?’ Alex was direct, and not letting me get away with changing the subject.
I hesitated. ‘I don’t really let myself think like that.’
‘Well, think about it now. If you could click your fingers and have a child to raise even all by yourself, would you?’
‘Yes,’ I answered instantly, surprising myself. ‘I would.’
‘Then why don’t you? Tara, lots of women adopt. Look at Sandra Bullock! Charlize Theron, too. Madonna! You wouldn’t be the first A-lister to give an abandoned child a dream life.’
‘What if I was bad at it?’ I whispered.
‘Bad at what? Do you honestly think a child would be worse off with you than in the system? You’re an amazing stepmom – I know you’d be brilliant. Darius would tell you that you could do it, Tara.’
‘Darius would have helped.’ A tear slid down my face.
‘Eventually.’ Alex looked thoughtful. ‘He wasn’t keen on babies and toddlers. Too sticky.’
A laugh escaped me, because she was right. Darius had no time for small kids pulling his hair or smearing his clothes. ‘But as soon as they were coordinated, my god. He would have stage-mothered them to within an inch of their life.’
We smiled at each other sadly. ‘Darius is the reason we know each other, you know,’ Alex said.
‘Do you think he knows we made up?’
‘I think he was waiting for it.’
The next few days passed in a blur. In Dublin, funerals happen quickly and are the kind of occasions where everyone is welcome. My dad used to tell a story when I was young about his late cousin’s mistress showing up to his burial and releasing a flock of homing pigeons at the graveside to make her presence felt. They had met at a club for racing birds and carried on for more than a decade behind his wife’s back. I’d always admired her refusal to hide away, and the story had grown legs over the years. The last time I’d heard it, she’d trained a pigeon to attack the grieving widow. Good old Irish whispers.
In New York, though, it’s a different story. Funerals are a lot more formal, invite-only and there are myriad options when the departed is an atheist, as Darius was. He’d left instructions on file with his attorney and his requests had been both outlandish and unsurprising. He wanted his wake to take place at the renowned Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on the Upper East Side and for his remains to arrive in a horse-drawn carriage. Darius wished to be cremated, with half of the ashes to be scattered along the Royal Canal in Dublin by Deirdre and half to be kept by his husband in New York.
This all meant waiting for a day that his preferred suite at the funeral parlour was free. We also had to allow time for friends and relatives to fly in from the UK and Ireland, and Francisco’s loved ones from Brazil, and the days were spent making arrangements, greeting those who arrived and trying to keep ourselves from burning out before the big send-off.
In his letter of wishes upon his death, Darius had requested that both Alex and I do readings, something that touched me, until I learned what had been planned. Alex had been asked to compose an original poem, ‘like the sad one in Four Weddings and a Funeral that makes everyone sob’. For me, Darius had chosen the famous ‘All the World’s a Stage’ monologue from As You Like It.
I was fuming – he knew well that I struggled with ye olde English and iambic pentameter and that Alex was the more natural choice for Shakespeare. Having her write a poem was hard work, and I knew she was panicking about doing him justice. Then I realized that’s exactly why Darius had asked for this. To push us both out of our comfort zones, as he always had when he was alive.
I held a small reception for immediate family and close friends in my apartment on the morning of the service. We were all wearing purple, as decreed by the departed. Darius had once attended a memorial in Thailand and had been taken by the beauty of the traditional colour donned by mourners there. I remembered him telling us about it at the time, laughing as he declared the shade ‘so much more chic than Grim Reaper black, darling’.
Shanice had leapt into action, armed with my credit card, dressing all of us in various shades of mulberry, plum, amethyst and violet, and everyone looked fantastic. I was wearing a particularly extravagant hat by Philip Treacy, and Alex was actually managing to walk in high heels. I hoped Darius could see us, and that he approved.
The inner circle assembled was a motley crew: me, Francisco, Storm and Xav, Alex and her parents, Jen and her mother, Angela, Brian, Lorraine, two senior staffers from The Scene and Ethel, his elderly Irish aunt. Francisco hadn’t wanted his own family present. He was delighted that they’d made the journey for the service out of love for him but felt that this gathering was for those who truly knew and adored Darius. ‘My parents, they tolerated our relationship but never considered us properly married, not in the eyes of God. They can meet us at the funeral home. That’s enough.’
