I felt sorry for her that morning. I loved her; I wanted to kill for her, to smash down the grey walls of her life and to free her. Anger clutched at me as I looked at the man she had married as he sat there, the smoke from his cigarette climbing lazily, his legs crossed.
He saw it in me as I looked from her to him, my eyes meeting his, in that second he had me. He knew it; I had revealed myself to him. I remember him smiling as if to say go on, let’s see how long you can hold it, let’s see how big you are.
‘Seen enough?’ he asked.
I nodded carefully and took my eyes from him, wondering if he would pursue it, but he didn’t. I was easy prey. I was a pushover.
My sister broke the silence that morning. She rushed in from playing outside, her hair strewn across her face, her doll Lola pressed to her breast. She threw open the door and yelled.
‘Mammy.’
The wind rushed in, blowing apart the game my father had been playing. It ran through the kitchen like a storm of freshness, banishing the silence, busting it into a thousand little pieces.
‘Sssh,’ my mother had said. ‘Your father’s thinking.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘Nothing. I meant…’
‘Don’t take the piss.’
‘I’m not. Please, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you were.’
‘No, I wasn’t. It just came out. I didn’t mean it that way. Ciara, come here, do this dress up, what have you been doing to yourself?’
‘Don’t fuck around with me,’ my father said as my mother fussed over my sister, running her hand across her face, gathering the snot from her nose between her fingers and shaking it into the sink, then running the tap.
‘Don’t speak like that.’
‘I’ll speak any fucking way I please.’
‘Alright. Alright.’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘I said yes.’
‘Good.’
As he left he slammed the door behind him. I remember sitting there looking at my hands, they were shaking. Ciara began to cry, dropping her doll as she put her hands to her face. My mother bent down to her and pulled her close as we heard the sound of my father’s car pulling out of the garage in the yard and roar away from the house. I could imagine him sitting there, his hand ripping through the gears, his eyes blazing with anger, his world small and cold.
I believed that I was falling. It was as real to me as my next breath. As I lay there in that hospital bed night after night all I could see was the tumble of my body through space. I could feel the moisture of the clouds bathe my face and the wind tugging at my clothes. I could see my life spread out before me like a half-assembled jigsaw. Sometimes I was glad and enjoyed the sensation, happy to be leaving everything behind. Other times fear held my hand as I fell and I would shake and moan as I saw the ground below hurtling towards me. I remember grabbing at the air, trying to find something to hold on to. I had left love behind and my only hope was these men and women who tended to me, whose job it was to bring people like me back from the brink.
I fell into my past. I walked the hard ground of my childhood again. I saw our marriage. I saw our love begin and end. I became a ghost walking the corridors of the living. They told me later that it wasn’t uncommon for a man in my condition to believe strange things, to think that he is in peril. Some never return from the strange land that they find themselves in. Hell is alive and well in the minds of men such as me, one of the nurses said with a strange grin on his face.
There were times as I lay in that hospital room when I felt my fear subside, it was as fleeting as a bad man’s smile. For a moment, I was embraced by a sense of peace, and my body’s fever abated. It was in moments like these that I tried to ask God to forgive me, but I was still too angry with him and the words never made it past my lips. I still blamed him for all that my father had done to me. He died a long time ago but he still had a hold on the guts of my being. His hands are always there twisting and pulling. Sometimes when I was falling I could hear him whispering, taunting me.
I thought of my life, of how I had believed that I was a fortress, standing alone on the horizon of other people’s lives. I saw how much of a lie that was. I had learned the hard way. Here I was, alone, dependent on the kindness of these doctors. I thought of all the pain I had caused, the misery I had brought to my door and the doors of others. At night sometimes when I woke I would call for someone to come and sit with me. If no-one came I would lie there shivering in the dark hoping that my fall was almost at an end.
I see you as I first saw you, your eyes shining, your face offered to me as I bent to kiss it. We were in a bar in County Clare, behind us people were celebrating New Year’s Eve, and we had slipped away and left them to put the old year to bed. We stood on the small wooden pier that fronted the pub and watched the night sky turn in glitter and ice high above us.
How long ago that New Year’s Eve seems and yet sometimes in a moment when my weary spirit is caught off-guard, I taste your sweetness once more as if it was all about to happen again. I’ll be ready this time and meet you on the long pier, which divided the sea and held us and our dreams that night long ago.
‘I love you.’
‘I know,’ you said.
‘Do you?’
‘Do I what? Know that you love me?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Oh you mean…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I love you? What do you think?’
‘I think yes.’
‘Then you think right,’ you said.
Just after, you smiled and quickly closed your lips over your teeth, and a slight embarrassment flickered across your eyes. It was because one of your incisors was crooked, I’d seen you do it many times, most especially in company. It gave you a vulnerability that made me want you more. I remember I put my fingers to your lips and ran my thumb across them, holding your eyes.
‘But…’
‘Love isn’t just saying. It’s doing too,’ you said.
‘I love your mouth.’
‘Gabriel, I’m serious.’
‘The wow of your mouth.’
‘Gabriel?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you listening?
‘Yes.’
‘Then show me, Gabriel. Show me.’
‘Your lips…so beautiful.’
‘Gabriel.’
‘Yes?’
‘Words are easy. I don’t want that, do you hear, I don’t want that.’