Look at that, Malcolm thought, she was inching her way home.
To Malcolm’s ear, Cobie pronounced Gillam like she was holding her nose. The one time aside from their wedding that she’d come to Gillam was to meet Malcolm, fifteen years earlier, and she kept pointing out things that she found interesting. That there were seven Catholic churches within five miles was interesting to Cobie, and that so many business names were Irish. She found it interesting that so many cars had a union local displayed on the bumper, and as they walked through town she called out each one they passed—carpenters, sandhogs, scaffolders, ironworkers, steamfitters—as if she never knew these jobs existed. How much do jobs like that pay? she wanted to know. What were the benefits? How long could a person do a job like that?
“Why?” Malcolm asked. “You gonna start digging tunnels?” Jess gave him a look that said, Watch it. He was sick of Cobie’s observations. He thought she was a snob.
But it was interesting that Jess was back in Gillam. She probably wanted to meet up, but she was so stubborn. Well, he had a few things to say now that he’d had space to think. He wouldn’t let her back in without a conversation, that was for sure. He had a memory of her in her twenties, just as they were getting together, how she used to stand with her friends but keep her eyes on him while he worked. How he felt electrified by that, astonished, really, given how brightly she shined and how proud everyone was of her going to that good school, her hair gleaming down her back, the breathtaking perfection of her profile when she turned to talk to the person next to her. Everything he did—mixing, reaching, leaning over the bar—he felt more acutely knowing she might glance over at him for a moment.
Since Cobie told him Jess was in Gillam, he’d been picturing her against the backdrop of her mother’s floral wallpaper, the two of them settling in to watch Dateline. He imagined her mulling over how to approach him, how to apologize. He remembered the first time he drove her home. She was not quite twenty-four and he was twenty-eight. They hadn’t done anything yet, though he decided at some point that night that he had to kiss her, and didn’t understand why he hadn’t already. They were four grades apart, just enough to have missed each other in high school. He’d overlapped with her older brother, Mickey, but Mickey was two years younger than Malcolm and played soccer and took all honors classes. Only the name rang a bell. Jess was beautiful and funny and a little different from the other girls. When she stood near the bar, something inside of him wobbled; he became clumsy and self-conscious when normally he felt graceful and fluid, like his movements had been choreographed to precisely fit the narrow space of his workplace, his stage. He couldn’t remember ever feeling self-conscious before meeting her.
She told him she had an apartment in Manhattan but came to Gillam every few weeks, to see her parents and go out with her high school friends. On the night when he drove her home for the first time, she sat at the bar and they talked. When her group went to leave, he suggested she stay, keep him company.
The thing he remembered most about dropping her off at her parents’ at four in the morning was not the kiss, whatever that had been like, but that she hopped out of the car and ran to the front door like a little kid. She took the concrete steps two at a time, pumping her arms like a high hurdler. When she got to the door, she turned and waved at him before disappearing inside. Not a flirtatious wave. Not a demure Miss America wave. It was a dorky wave: palm wide, vigorous back and forth. Alone in his car, the stink of the bar on his skin as always, he laughed. What a weirdo.
She’d probably been driving by their house every day since she came back, looking for his car, trying to think of a way to approach him. Well, let her sweat, he thought. I’m not going knocking. No way.
The music was catchy. More people were starting to sway. He made his way over to Patrick and Siobhán.
“Look at his place,” Patrick said as Siobhán gave Malcolm a long, tender hug, the kind he imagined she gave her children when they woke from bad dreams. “Packed to the gills.”
Malcolm ignored that, hoping to imply that the bar was full all the time, but then remembered that Patrick knew, of course. His oldest friend, he could read Malcolm easily and knew almost from the start that things were not going as Malcolm expected them to. He and Siobhán had their six-year-old’s birthday party there a few months earlier, hired a magician, told Malcolm it was because Eamon loved the mozzarella sticks at the Half Moon and so would his little buddies. They invited parents, too, no doubt so the bar bill would be substantial. Malcolm wouldn’t take Patrick’s money, but then he found it in an envelope in his car, in the compartment where he kept his nicotine lozenges.
He looked around at the table where Billy had been sitting, and noted it was empty. He just wanted to be seen, Malcolm knew. He just wanted Malcolm to know that he was keeping close tabs.
“Date night?” Malcolm asked, flagging down Bridget, the waitress, to bring his friends another round.
Siobhán glanced at Patrick, and Malcolm caught a whiff of panic.
“Yeah, sort of,” Siobhán said, but when Malcolm looked at Patrick, Patrick wouldn’t meet his eyes. Malcolm gestured toward the empties in front of them. “Sorry about that,” he said as he plucked them up, said he’d send someone to wipe down the table.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Siobhán said.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Mal.”
“I’m usually here earlier. My mother came by with food.”
“Do whatever you have to do,” Patrick said. “We can hang out later. When you get a minute.”
“Yeah? Okay good.”
* * *
It had been over four months since Jess left. Seventeen weeks to be exact. Thanksgiving with his mother, his sister, his brother-in-law who was on the wagon, his three near-feral nephews. He got completely hammered, and his mother, who’d normally give him a little reminder about genetics and his line of work, only guided him upstairs to his high school bed and tucked him in. She had a pot of coffee and a plate of eggs ready for him in the morning and didn’t say a word.
Christmas he spent with Patrick and Siobhán because his mother went to his sister’s in Boston. New Year’s at the bar. In his own house, he kept the TV on nonstop for company. When his friends came by, they let themselves in through the back slider, something they would never do if Jess were around. It was a shock at first. With adulthood and marriage came a turning in toward one’s own unit, but now, it seemed, he was everyone’s worry, and part of him suspected these friends, grown men, all in their mid-forties, loved the excuse to leave their families on a Saturday afternoon and claim they were checking on Malcolm.
* * *
“Malcolm,” Roddy said now as Malcolm approached the bar. “Hey.”
The whole place was full from end to end, and from one group came a sudden swell of people singing. Others joined in from all the way across the room, and it became a call-and-response, a song everyone knew. You might not know how you felt about the song if you were alone in your car, but sung in a local pub? With a drink in your hand? Alongside strangers? Pure magic. The problem was that if Malcolm wanted the same thing to happen the next night, and the next, just having the thought in his mind and looking for the right moment would make it impossible. The warmth, the feeling of camaraderie, even the night sky swollen with snow—it was like chemistry between people—surprising, impossible to predict—but once the charge was in the air, there was no force more powerful.