11
“Simple and True”
Like a rainbow after a shower
I don’t regret a day, not one single hour.
Ah bring on the bigger things I can’t help but follow,
without you by my side my heart would be hollow.
Jack L, Universe
July 2008
Breda had refused to get out of bed since the television reconstruction of Alexandra’s disappearance. Her daughter Kate gave her sponge baths, and her husband sat with her and encouraged her to eat the food that Kate and Eamonn’s wife, Frankie, took turns to cook and deliver. She’d take a few bites but only when her husband pleaded with her and only to satisfy him. It was not Breda’s intent to starve herself or to cause pain to the people she loved, and if she could have summoned the mental and physical strength to get up, she would have.
“Look, love, it’s shepherd’s pie,” Ben Walsh said to his wife, raising the fork toward her mouth. “Frankie made it according to your own recipe.”
Breda closed her eyes and opened her mouth, the food fell in, and Ben cleaned off the tiny amount that fell out with a tea towel. She didn’t chew. Instead it just sat in her mouth until it had melted enough for her to swallow.
“Eamonn’s downstairs. Would you like to see him?”
She blinked a few times, and he wondered if her eyes were dry or whether she was now resorting to communication through the medium of eye movement.
“Kate will be over tonight with fresh clothes, and she’ll help you wash,” Ben said, “and I’ll be downstairs, so maybe afterward you could come down and join us for a while. I can put a duvet on the sofa. What do you think, love?”
Breda closed her eyes and then opened them and nodded slightly.
Ben smiled at her. “Great, great stuff. I’ll tell the kids.”
He took the tray off the bed and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Breda lay there motionless, waiting for sleep to come.
Ben joined Eamonn downstairs. Eamonn hung up from a call and turned to his dad. Taking the tray from him, he noticed that the shepherd’s pie was not even half eaten.
“We need to get a doctor out here,” he said.
“I know,” Ben said. “We will.”
“When?”
“When your mammy says it’s okay.”
“Dad, my mother is in no fit state to decide that.”
“She’s just sad, son.”
“No, Dad. She was just sad; now it’s more sinister.”
Ben walked outside and lit a cigarette. Eamonn followed him, grabbed a plastic deck chair and sat beside him.
“You can’t hide from this, Dad,” he said. “You could hide from Alexandra, but not this.”
Ben stayed silent because his son was right. He had hidden from the reality of the loss of his daughter for months. He had pushed her away into a tiny corner of his mind because to think about her and to allow himself to feel the emotions he had felt those first few weeks would have been unbearable. His pain turned to anger, and in the absence of an aggressor he had turned on Tom. He had loathed him since that day over a year before when Alexandra had walked out her door and vanished. He had decided that even if Tom had been working when they lost her and even if he had loved Alexandra, his love hadn’t been enough to keep her safe. He didn’t care that it was cruel and unkind to blame the man who’d driven himself half mad to find her, because the only time he had felt better in the past year was when he was making Tom feel worse. Eamonn coped by pretending that Alexandra hadn’t been as happy as she had pretended to be and that mentally she hadn’t been capable of accepting her life as it was. She had forfeited a career she’d worked hard to succeed in for a baby that never came. She had tried hormone injections and four rounds of IVF, acupuncture, herbs, tonics; she had given up smoking, joined a gym, changed her eating habits; and although she had maintained a happy and casual fa?ade, he had known she was lying, he had known that she was desperate to be a mother, and he had known that every single month and every negative test was eating away at his sister until there was little of the real her left. At least that’s what he told himself, because it was easier to believe that she had chosen to walk away from her own life or even that she’d thrown herself over Dalkey pier than to face the horrifying alternatives. And so again, while he didn’t hold the same anger as his father, there was a large part of him that held Tom accountable for the loss of his sister. The difference between Eamonn and his father was that since the reconstruction and Breda’s subsequent withdrawal, Ben had realized, while sitting on plastic chairs in their back garden, that Tom was as helpless in the disappearance of Alexandra as he now found himself in the face of his wife’s mysterious illness. All the anger that he’d built up to protect himself from true suffering was slowly dissipating, the pain was slowly returning, and he now found himself experiencing the darkness that Tom had been experiencing all along.
“Call the doctor,” he said to his son after the longest time, “and call Tom.”
“What are we calling him for?” Eamonn said.
“Because your mammy’s fond of him and he’ll come,” Ben said.
Eamonn nodded and walked inside with his phone to his ear, leaving his father alone to smoke and to breathe through the pain that finally he allowed himself to feel.
Tom arrived just as Kate was leaving. She hugged him and thanked him for coming, and he told her he was delighted to have been asked. He had attempted to make contact with Breda a few times within the previous five weeks but had been told it would be better to stay away. Ben came out from the sitting room, and much to Tom’s surprise he offered his hand. Tom shook it.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “Alexandra, well, it wasn’t your fault any more than mine or her mammy’s. It was just something terrible that happened.”
Tom didn’t know what to say. His hands shook and his lip trembled. “Thank you.”
Ben slapped his back. “She’s upstairs. The doctor’s been here and he gave her something to sleep, but she’s been awake awhile and I know she’d love to see you.”
Tom walked up the stairs to Breda’s room. It was lit by one lamp by the side of her bed. The room smelled of fresh blankets, and Breda smelled of Kate’s perfume. She was thinner than ever and her veins stood out more. He sat in the chair by her bed and took her hand in his. She looked at him, but he wondered if she saw him at all.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, “and I’m not the only one.”
She tried to smile—it was the least she could do for poor Tom, who was kind enough to visit with her.
“I’m scared,” he said after a minute or two. “I’m scared that you let your mind go to the dark place and that you got stuck there. Did you get stuck there, Breda?”
Tears welled in her eyes and she nodded.
“You need to come back,” he said. “You need to be strong, because we can’t lose you too.”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and even her mumble sounded raspy.
“Don’t be sorry. Just come back.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“It means if a broken spirit pleases God, that is what I’ll give Him.”
“Breda, you lying here is not going to bring Alexandra back.”
“Maybe it will,” she said, and she licked her dry lips.
“This is madness.”
“No,” she said. “This is all I can do. I have no choice. My body feels broken, but as sad as I am, my mind is strong.”
“You have to talk to your family.”
She blinked and inhaled and licked her dry lips again. “They don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand.”
She attempted to grip his hand with hers. “I can’t be expected to go on.”
“You’ll get help now,” he said.
She nodded, but she knew that it was too late, that nothing and no one could help her now.
“Whatever the doctor says, you’ll do,” he said.
She blinked.
“You’ll be okay,” he said, “and we will find her.”
Breda blinked again because she had said all that she was going to say.
Leslie woke up in her ward. It took awhile for her to come around, and when she did, the effects of morphine made the back of her head feel like it was being swallowed by her bed. She thought about attempting to sit up, but she couldn’t even garner the strength to move her head so that she could look down at herself. Through the narcotic-induced mist she could feel pain, but not enough to call for someone or seek attention. Her head and heart were both heavy, her insides desecrated, her breasts gone, and she didn’t realize it but her finger was pressing down on a button administering morphine and her bed was quickly beginning to feel like a tomb and she heard herself screaming.
Ah for f*ck’s sake, is this how I’m going to die?
The nurse appeared quickly and removed Leslie’s finger from the button and attempted to settle her. “Just relax, everything went well, you’re in good hands,” she said.
“The f*cking bed is swallowing me!” Leslie screamed.
“The bed is not swallowing you.”
“Save me, you f*ckfaced motherf*cking f*cker!” Leslie said, and the woman in the bed opposite laughed.
“Okay, everything’s fine, I’ve got you,” the nurse said calmly.
“I am dying. I’ve been dying all my f*cking life!”
“You’re not dying.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a frog?”
The woman in the bed opposite put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.
“It’s the meds talking,” the nurse said to the woman, who was clearly enjoying the meds talking and was looking forward to hearing more from them.
“Nurse?”
“Yes, Leslie.”
“I’ve gone blind.”
“No, love, you’ve just closed your eyes.”
Leslie fell into a deep sleep after that and didn’t wake up for twelve hours. When she did wake, she had absolutely no memory of the incident ever having taken place.
Jim was the first person she remembered who visited. He was reading a newspaper when she woke.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“President Sarkozy has decided to postpone a trip to Ireland to discuss the EU Lisbon Treaty.”
“Oh,” she said, “I forgot to vote.”
“Well, you had other things on your mind.”
“Yeah,” she said, and suddenly she felt like crying. Her face still felt a little numb, so she didn’t realize that she actually was.
“You’re going to be all over the place,” he said. “It’s perfectly normal.”
“Nothing about this is normal,” she said.
“In a few weeks you’re going to feel so much better.”
“But I’m going to look so much worse.”
“No,” he said, “you’re going to look like a new woman, a woman with a massive weight taken off her shoulders.”
“I’ll have no breasts,” she said. “I haven’t even looked yet. I’m too scared.”
“Take your time, allow yourself to heal, be kind to yourself, and then when the time comes if you’re not happy, you can get implants.”
“Like Pamela Anderson.”
“No. Most definitely not like Pamela Anderson.”
Leslie would have laughed, but she was too sore. The drains coming out of her stomach and chest had blood and pus spewing into bottles, and it was as uncomfortable as it was unsightly. When the nurse fixed Leslie’s bedsheets, the sheet covering a bottle fell away, revealing its horrible contents to Jim, but if he saw it, it certainly didn’t faze him. Of course he had witnessed that and more, even if it had been more than ten years before.
After he left, Leslie was sick in a bowl for an hour, every part of her ached, and with every retch her newly stitched skin pulled and burned. When the woman with the cart asked her if she wanted some toast, Leslie pointed to the bowl before leaning in for another spew.
“Say no more, my dear,” the woman said. “I’ll catch you on the way back.”
images
Elle waited until the third day before visiting her friend. She did this because when she checked Google, a website told her that day two following an operation was the worst day, and she didn’t want to make Leslie’s life harder than it already was. She arrived with grapes, magazines, and a book about self-discovery. She was on her own because Jane had to meet their accountant. She was nervous and wasn’t sure about what she should say, and for once she was quiet.
“Are you all right?” Leslie asked.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Yes.” Leslie smiled.
“I didn’t sleep,” Elle admitted. “I couldn’t make my mind stop.”
“I’ve been there.”
“Sometimes it feels like my mind is on a treadmill and I’m trying to reach the Stop button but I can’t and with every second that passes I feel like I’m about to fall off.”
“What kind of things do you think about?” Leslie asked, glad that they weren’t talking about the operation.
“Oh, I don’t know—work, Jane, Kurt, me, a woman in the Sudan lying on a dusty floor dying of AIDS as we speak; I think about her and how bloody unfair it is. A horse found slashed to pieces, starved and burned, and I think about that poor gentle animal’s suffering. A young boy age sixteen stabbed in London on his way home from a football match; I think about him and the family he’s left behind. A woman who is promised a new life only to be consigned to a life of sexual slavery; I think about her and the hell she endures day in and day out. I think about Alexandra and where she could be and what has been done to her, and I think about you and how sad your life has been, all that you’ve lost and all that you’ve missed out on. I think about how brave you are, and dignified and kind. I think that if I could be like anyone in the world it would be you, and I think flat-chested women are huge on the catwalk right now, that kind of thing,” Elle said, and she smiled at her friend.
“Jesus, that’s a lot of thinking.”
“Yeah, too much.”
“Elle, I like your way of thinking. Now pass me a grape and tell me a story.”
Elle did as she was told and stayed until the nurse kicked her out an hour later.
Dominic walked into his hotel and was passing the bar when Elle called his name. He turned to her and said hello before looking to see if she was on her own. He approached her, and she asked him to join her as she was having something quick to eat following her visit with Leslie. He agreed and ordered coffee.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Same as you.”
“Really? Why do you have a hotel key card in your front pocket then?”
“Okay,” he said, “you’ve caught me, but don’t tell Jane.”
“Tell Jane what?”
Dominic explained that his wife had thrown him out of their house for a second time in two months over a week ago. He was resigned to the fact that his marriage was over, but not to the fact that he was in a hotel while she was in his house.
“So take it back.”
“My solicitor says—”
“Screw your solicitor. It’s your house, so take it back.”
“How?”
“What do you mean how? Go home, pack up her stuff, throw her out, and change the locks.”
“What if she’s already changed the locks?”
“Go home, break in, pack up her stuff, throw her out, and change the locks.”
“You’re serious.”
“Absolutely.”
“But what if she calls the police?”
“The deeds are in your name. Besides, they’ll consider it a domestic dispute and as long as nobody throws a punch you’re home free.”
“I can’t be involved in a domestic dispute. I’m a bank manager.”
Elle laughed at the absurdity of his rationale. “I hate to break it to you, Dominic, but the Herald isn’t parked outside your door waiting for something to report.”
Dominic thought about it for a minute or two and was really warming to the idea.
“Will you come with me?” he said.
Elle rubbed her hands together. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Bella’s car was not in the driveway. They parked two doors down on Dominic’s insistence, then Elle made her way to the door and he hid behind a tree in front of the house. Elle knocked and waited. After a minute or two she signaled to Dominic that all was clear. He emerged from behind the tree and fumbled for his house key. He breathed deeply, put the key in the lock and turned it; the door remained shut.
“Damn it,” he said.
“Relax,” Elle counseled. “Follow me.”
They walked around to the back of the house, and Elle picked up a rock and took off her jacket and wrapped the rock in it.
“The French doors are double glazed,” Dominic said, still looking around.
“Yeah, but the window in the downstairs loo isn’t.”
“It’s too small.”
“Too small for you, fat boy.”
“I’m not fat.”
“Do you have an alarm?” Elle said.
“Yes.”
“Would she have changed the code?”
“I don’t know if she’d even know how.”
“If she has, what would she change it to?”
“I don’t know. Actually, I do know—she has a terrible memory so all her cards are the same number: 6666.”
“Fine.” She hit the glass with the rock encased in her jacket, and it cracked. She hit it again and it smashed.
The alarm went off. She cleared away all the jagged pieces of glass by chipping away with the rock. She stopped only when Dominic almost shrieked hello to his neighbor Rachel Jameson.
“Forgotten your key, Dominic?” she said.
“Oh, yes, can you believe it?” he said, and Elle thought he might have a heart attack there and then.
“Always the way,” she said.
Elle mouthed “always the way” and laughed a little. Dominic gave her a kick. When Rachel went indoors, Elle took a leg up from Dominic and climbed in through the window. She ran to the alarm and keyed in 6666, and it stopped.
“What a moron,” she said as she opened the front door.
Dominic sprinted in and shut the door with a swing.
“Take that, bitch!” he said, and he giggled like a girl.
“We’re not there yet,” Elle warned. “Call a local twenty-four-hour window repair and tell them you’ll give them a tip of a hundred euro if they get here and fix the window within thirty minutes. And do the same with a locksmith.”
Dominic did as he was told, and Elle went upstairs, armed with a suitcase she found under the stairs, and started to clear Bella’s things. Dominic made his way around the house bagging anything and everything that was Bella’s. He kept checking his watch and was alarmed to discover he was sweating profusely. Elle was behaving as though she was accustomed to breaking and entering.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Dominic; this is your house,” she said when he commented on her calm demeanor.
The window guy made it in fifteen minutes and had the window fitted in another ten. Dominic paid him in full and shut the door with another swing. The locksmith followed ten minutes later and was gone within thirty minutes. Dominic hopped, skipped, and jumped up the stairs to where Elle was bagging the last of Bella’s clothes.
“I think I love you,” he said.
“Yeah, well, hold your horses,” Elle said. “Next we need to send her packing.”
Dominic carried Bella’s cases down the stairs and parked them beside the front door. Elle checked the clock. It was just after nine.
“What now?” he said.
“Now we wait,” she replied.
They didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later Bella’s car drove into the driveway. Elle’s heart was racing and, despite her cool fa?ade, it had been since she had broken the window. Dominic gulped and braced himself. The key went into the lock and came out, went in again and came out. Bella stepped back from the door and looked at the house as though it would provide some sort of answer. She went back to the door and tried her key again. She walked around the back of the house and checked the French doors. She cupped her eyes and looked into the empty kitchen. Dominic and Elle waited with bated breath in the sitting room. Bella came around the front of the house once more, stepped over plants, and looked in the sitting-room window. When she saw Dominic and Elle, she banged on the window and shouted.
Elle went over to the window and opened it slightly.
“What can I do for you?” she said.
“You can let me into my house!” Bella shouted.
“But this isn’t your house. This is Dominic’s house. I know this because I knew him when he bought it, and my nephew has spent every weekend in it since he was four years old. You, on the other hand, have been here for five minutes. I trust in that time he didn’t sign over the deed? No, I didn’t think so.”
“Who do you think you are?”
“Me, I’m someone who pays her own way. You want out of the marriage with Dominic, and to be fair no one blames you for that, but take what’s yours. This house is not yours.”
While Elle was talking, Dominic was placing Bella’s bags outside the front door. He closed the door and gave Elle the thumbs-up.
“Take care of yourself,” she said, and she closed the window.
“We’ll see about that,” Bella said, and she stamped through the plants and retrieved her cases, got into her car, and drove away.
Dominic stood at the window, agog. “I can’t believe we just did that.”
Elle danced her way around the sitting room. “That was fun.”
Dominic opened a bottle of wine to celebrate and insisted Elle join him. They clinked glasses and relived the break-in and laughed and drank, and just when the night couldn’t get any stranger, Dominic told Elle she was amazing. Then he leaned in and kissed her, and she responded, and twenty minutes later Elle was sitting on top of Bella’s soon-to-be ex-husband in Bella’s ex-bed.
Jane took it upon herself to move Leslie to her hospice, and so twelve days after Leslie’s operation she gently guided her to her car and helped her sit. She was in a quandary as to whether or not Leslie should wear the seat belt, but Leslie insisted it would be fine if she held it away from herself.
Leslie was quiet in the car, and Jane understood that she didn’t want to chat, and so she put on the radio and they listened to a morning talk show. When they were close to the place, Jane rang ahead so that a nurse with a wheelchair met them at the door. The nurse wheeled Leslie inside and Jane followed with her bags. She was brought to a private room, and the nurse helped her into bed and explained how to work the remote control, informed her of mealtimes, and said that someone would be around with pain medication in three hours. Leslie grunted and nodded, and the nurse left.
“Well,” Jane said, “that all sounds good.”
“Does it?”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” Leslie said. “Nobody can do anything.”
“Elle’s been Googling this—it’s normal to feel depressed.”
“I know. She told me.”
“I wish I could help.”
“Me too.”
“Jim will be here later.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leslie said, thinking she was hinting at romance the way Elle often did.
“It means that Jim will be here later.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like me to help you wash?” Jane said.
“You want to see how I’ve been butchered?”
Jane was horrified that she would think that. “No. God, absolutely no, no, no!”
She was so horrified and so embarrassed and so red that it actually made Leslie smile.
“I’m sorry,” Leslie said.
“God Almighty, Leslie,” Jane said, sitting down, “my life is hard enough without you …” She trailed off and shook her head. “Life is hard enough.”
After that Leslie did ask for her help. She hadn’t had her bandages changed in five days, and she wanted to do it herself, but she needed help.
“Are you sure?” Jane asked.
“Yes. Are you sure?”
“I offered, didn’t I?” Jane said.
She helped Leslie into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet. Jane filled the sink with warm soapy water and then helped Leslie take off her pajama top. The bandages were wrapped tightly around her, and Jane quickly found the fastenings. She slowly and gently began to unravel them. Leslie held the front of them, with her hand protecting and concealing the area as it was exposed.
When the final bandage was unraveled, Leslie dropped her hand and revealed the indents and angry slashes where her breasts had used to be. There were holes from the drains, and one was slightly septic. Leslie’s eyes filled, her nose ran, and her lips pursed.
“Seeing is believing,” she said as she wiped her eyes. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s still healing.”
“It’s still horrible.”
“Look, it is awful, but then I’ve an ass that looks like it’s made of cheese.”
“At least you’re honest,” Leslie said.
“Well, I’m a pretty bad liar, and you’re not the kind of person who’s easily patronized.”
“Do you think I should get implants?” Leslie asked.
“That’s your decision.”
“Would you?”
“Yes,” Jane said. “I probably would.”
“It’s not an easy decision.”
“Neither is opting to have a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy.”
Leslie sighed. “With or without breasts, I’ll never be whole now.”
“Wombs are overrated. They can get you into all kinds of trouble.”
Leslie laughed. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” Jane squeezed the sponge and gently cleaned around the wounds as Leslie took in her new shape in the mirror.
Tom was sitting on her steps when Jane returned from the hospice. She got out of the car, and he took the bag of Leslie’s washing from her.
“I’ve got some news,” he said, “about Alexandra.”
Jane stopped in her tracks. “What?”
“They found her wedding ring.”
“Where?”
“In a market in Wexford.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s something,” she said.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “It’s something.”
She hugged him, and he dropped the bags and hugged her back, and from inside her flat Rose watched them hold on to each other tightly, and even from a distance she recognized the look in her daughter’s eyes.
“Oh Janey, another unobtainable man! At least you’re focking consistent.”