Softening my voice, a note of pain: “I know you did. I wish I’d been more help. I really wanted to be, but I didn’t know how, so I just froze up. Teenage guys are idiots.”
“Ah, no, you were fine. I’m just saying, I should have been paying more attention to Susanna’s issues—specially when she was being so kind, letting me come over all the time; it’s not like we were best friends or anything, just that your house was closest and your uncle didn’t really stick his nose in the way someone’s parents would have . . . But I was so wrapped up in my own problems, you know? I just have this vague memory of Dominic giving them hassle. I thought he hit Leon, or something? And Susanna was upset? But like I said, I could have it all wrong—” The male voice in the background, asking some question. “Toby, I’ve got to go. Ring me any time if there’s anything else I might know. OK?”
Under all the new composure and cheer and whatever else, she was still the same Faye. She totally meant it, but within half an hour she would have forgotten all about me, which was fine with me. “I will,” I said. “Thanks a million, Faye. You’re a star—as always. And you sound like you’re doing great. It’s good to hear.”
“I am, yeah. Thanks. And I hope you feel better soon.”
My hands were shaking so hard that it took me three tries to get my phone into my jeans pocket. I had never done anything like this before. The cunning maverick striking out on his lone enterprise had never been my thing; I had always been happy to drift along in someone else’s wake, joining in on whatever looked interesting and leaving the rest alone. It felt strange enough doing this to begin with, but I’d been unprepared for how well I would make it work, or for how good it would feel. And what made it even murkier and more confusing was how much of myself it had brought back: my old ease, my old charm, my old persuasiveness, but transformed in fundamental ways, strange distorted flashes reflected through a dark mirror.
I could have used a Xanax, but I needed my head clear. I lit a cigarette and took a very deep drag instead. A blackbird stopped pecking at the mud and turned one sharp merciless eye on me; I blew a long stream of smoke at it, and it took off in a riot of wings and skimmed away over the wall.
I knew we had thrown a party at the beginning of July, that summer, once the Leaving Cert was done and our parents went off traveling and the three of us moved into Hugo’s. There had been one for Leon’s birthday, so that had to have been around the third week of August; and there had been another one sometime in September, a last hurrah before everyone went off to college at the beginning of October. That one was too late, if Faye had spent September in France. The first one was too early; we had only just moved in, she wouldn’t have had time to start showing up. That left Leon’s birthday.
Leon hadn’t had a lot of friends to invite, but I was pretty sure a decent handful of my mates and Susanna’s had shown up, and probably some people who didn’t actually count as any of our mates—everyone knew the Ivy House parties were good ones. Sean and Dec would have been there, whichever of the other guys happened to be around, Susanna’s gaggle and likely a few of the cooler girls from her school who fancied bagging a rugby player. And Dominic, I was positive he had been there, for whatever that was worth: Dom laughing, glitter of moonlight and coke in his eyes, Leon in a headlock scrabbling uselessly at his arm, smell of jasmine and happy raucous singing everywhere in the swaying dark, For he’s a jolly good fellow!
Which was the other thing. What Faye had said about Dominic giving Leon and Susanna hassle: could that possibly be what Martin had been on about? Faye had told Rafferty I wouldn’t have been happy about it, Rafferty had translated that into me having some big vendetta against Dominic? It felt like a stretch, but it was the closest I had to something that made sense.
And: assuming Faye hadn’t imagined or misinterpreted the whole thing, what exactly had been going on between Dominic and my cousins? I couldn’t remember him ever paying much attention to Susanna—Dom hadn’t gone for the nerdy type: he had occasionally cracked some dirty joke or tossed out some sexist comment so he could laugh at her Outraged Feminist mode, but he had hardly been the only person who did that. I did remember him giving Leon shit now and then, but again, it had been routine shit, the kind Leon had been taking from plenty of people ever since we were about twelve—fag jokes, lisps and limp wrists; when I happened to be around I had told the guys to back off, but it hadn’t seemed like a particularly big deal. Given the state Dominic had been in that summer, though, who knew: could he have ramped things up a level or two? Although surely Leon would have told me, surely I couldn’t have missed or forgotten that—
I wasn’t about to ask either Susanna or Leon the story. Martin’s visit had shifted, very subtly, the way I thought about them, about our positions on this new surreal chessboard where we had somehow found ourselves; even though I knew that was probably exactly what Martin had been aiming for, I couldn’t help it. Instead I rang Sean and asked him when would suit him and Dec to come over.
* * *
?They came the next evening, which moved me more than I could have told them even if I had wanted to. I got the message across by giving Sean shit for having gained a few pounds and giving Dec shit about Jenna—“Man, there’s what, half a million women in Dublin? At least one of them has to be single and sane, but no—”
“And have low standards,” Sean pointed out.
“There’s that.”
“What are you on about?” Dec demanded, injured. “I’m employed and I’ve got all my hair. That’s more than a lot of blokes.”
“You’re a narky bollix,” I told him. “I wouldn’t put up with you.”
“I’m not a— Melissa. Honestly, now. Am I a narky bollix?”
“You’re lovely.”
“See?”
“What else is she going to say? She’s a nice person, you’re sitting right there—”
The kitchen table where we had spent so many teenage evenings, loaded now with bright-patterned serving bowls—pasta, salad, Parmesan—and scraped plates and half-full wineglasses, tousled orange flowers and tarnished silver candlesticks. Hugo was laughing, chin propped on his woven fingers, candlelight flickering in his glasses, “—they’ve always been like this—” aside to Melissa, who was laughing too, sunshiny in a yellow dress. I threaded my fingers through hers on the table and gave her hand a squeeze.
“At least I’m not a fat bastard,” Dec said, to Sean.
Sean stuck out his belly and gave it an affectionate pat. “All muscle.”
“Jesus, dude,” I said. “You’d want to get onto that or you won’t fit into your wedding dress.”
“He won’t fit into the wedding photos—”
They had brought Hugo presents, the same way they had brought me presents in the hospital: fancy chocolates, books, DVDs, Armagnac—even I had forgotten that he liked Armagnac, but Dec had a long story about how when we were fifteen we had raided the booze cupboard and practically killed ourselves on swig after massive swig of it, no one willing to be the one who backed out: “Toby looked like he was about to explode, bright red, tears coming out—I called him a big pussy-boy, excuse the language, and went for it, right? next thing I know the room’s actually going round, I thought I was having a brain hemorrhage— I know you knew, Hugo, the three of us were gee-eyed, but fair play to you, you never said a word—”
“Well,” Hugo said, smiling, leaning sideways to fumble the bottle out of the present bag, “now you can have all the Armagnac you like, and enjoy it properly. Toby, would you fetch glasses?”
Sean and Dec got up with me, to clear the table. “The garden’s in bits,” I said, nodding towards the doors as I passed. “We’ve been trying to put stuff back in, but I think we might actually be making it worse.”