These kinds of interactions didn’t happen every day, or even every week. But I behaved as if they were about to. I was always conscious that I was minutes away from my next Dr. Byrne–related run-in, and held myself stiff. I didn’t want to be caught doing something that would further cement me in the Cork consciousness as That Girl.
Round red circles, the size of coins, appeared on the tops of my breasts and arms.
“Oh my God,” James said, smothering a laugh. “You actually have ringworm?”
Ringworm and scabies. The first thing we ever talked about, and we had just passed our first anniversary of it.
I did not have ringworm. I had something my family GP called “button psoriasis.” I was asked if I had any new stresses in my life.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I lied. “The economy?”
Our savings were more important than ever. I never went out any more, because I worked nights, and I never spent during the day, because I was asleep or getting ready to work again. James was also vigilant, and we were both putting away fifty a week.
“We need to get out,” I said to James.
“We need to get out,” he confirmed.
* * *
A Google search, December 2021:
Dr. Fred Byrne UCC cork
Dr. Fred Byrne UCC cork sick
Dr. Fred Byrne UCC cork sick coma
Aideen Harrington
Aideen Harrington sick husband coma
Deenie Harrington sick husband coma
And finally:
Alistair Harrington daughter husband sick coma
I search them all, like telegrams posted into the ether. Strangely enough, Alistair Harrington proves fruitful. A short interview in the Evening Echo had run at the beginning of October.
CORK POET TO RECEIVE RETROSPECTIVE AT CRAWFORD ART GALLERY
My eyes skitter down the page, taking in nonsense phrases like “the homecoming Cork’s poet laureate deserves” before finally landing on a quote from Deenie.
Speaking on behalf of her father’s estate, Aideen Byrne has said that she is “thrilled” the event will finally be taking place, her archival work having been delayed several times due to family illness.
“There’s been a lot of renewed interest in Dad’s work over the years. Poetry is big again, and I think younger audiences are beginning to realise how resonant his work still is.”
Alistair Harrington: Ashes to the Fire, Crawford Art Gallery, 10 October–15 December, Tickets €8
My first thought is: I should book my flight right now, brave the Christmas crowds at Stansted, and surprise my parents with a visit from their heavily pregnant daughter. Stand in the Crawford, my butt cheeks clenched, trying not to let out nervous pregnancy wind while I stare at the letters and photos that I once touched in the sun-drenched kitchen of the Harrington-Byrnes.
Or, the Byrnes.
She’s going by just Byrne now. Why, Deenie, when you were so comfortable with Harrington before, would you take your husband’s name? After everything he did to me and James, after everything he must have continued to do after I evaporated from your life completely? I circle back to the question I have asked myself hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the years: How did she make the marriage work? How much did she swallow and forgive? How much did he change and promise?
I am good at a few things, but I am great at being married. As I learned that year in Shandon Street, there is nothing that my personality or my humour thrives on more than being able to see the same person at the same time every day. I thrive on over-exposure, on elaborate jokes, on private mythology.
I am a huge advocate for marriage, and yet I still don’t understand how Deenie kept hers going.
I should go, I think, looking at flight comparison websites, to confirm to myself that it did all happen. That there was a person called Rachel Murray, and she existed in the summer of 2010, full of sex and books, surrounded by the men she was in love with.
And then the baby kicks and it feels like an earthquake from the inside.
26
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN James and me, which was unpleasant yet organic, began to morph into something else.
I woke up one morning in November unusually early. I woke up with my neck crooked, my nose blocked, and beginning to wonder why on earth I lived in this house at all. The ants in summer, the frigid cold in the winter. Nothing fun had happened in Shandon Street since the exodus of Carey and Dr. Byrne. We drank but not joyously; ate junk food, but never with a sense of shared sin, always because it was the warmest, quickest thing to shove into our bodies. We were heartbroken. Every now and then we would inform one another that we had “really turned a corner” with our sadness, and that we were “over it” now. It wasn’t true. We were not over it.
That early morning in November, I padded downstairs for a glass of water. It was 10 a.m., but it felt like dawn. I had got off work at three, and had stayed awake, wired, until well after four. James was awake, on his laptop, and talking on the phone.
When he saw me at the top of the stairs, he hung up like I had just caught him masturbating.
“Who was that?”
“Hmm?”
“On the phone. Who was that?”
“No one. What are you doing up?”
“Water.”
“Ah.”
“It’s cold.”
“I know.”
“Can I take a heater?”
“In my bedroom. Take a hoodie, too, if you want.”
I snuggled into bed and fell back to sleep. I would have forgotten about it, if the same thing didn’t happen again a week later. Another dropped phone call, another smile and an offer of clothes, or food, or a drive out to the McDonald’s. I kept catching James in the middle of something, but I didn’t know what that something was.
I started to suspect that he was sleeping with Dr. Byrne again. There seemed no other explanation. Were they emailing? Hadn’t Fred Byrne learned his lesson the first time?
James’s absences from the house became longer, his speech more guarded, his body language more withdrawn. We were supposed to be emigrating together in January, just six weeks away. Was now really the time to be starting up with the man who had betrayed us so thoughtlessly?
I didn’t want to ask about it. If I asked, then he would tell me, and because I couldn’t ever say no or stay mad at James, I would end up tangled in their world again. I was already a fugitive in my own city. There was no way I was going to be an accomplice to Dr. Byrne’s betrayal of Deenie again.
“Are you all right?” James asked one day. We were assembling a fake Christmas tree, gifted to us by his mother. Slotting branches into a green pole, the plastic leaves itching our faces.
“Yes,” I said. “Are you?”
“You just seem…” He examined one of the branches. “Prickly.”
“Good one. Is that going in the script?”
“Huh?”
“Branches. Prickly.”
“Oh. Right. Hah. No.” James looked queasy.
I thought about how I would feel if it was Carey who I was forbidden from seeing, even though he only lived a mile away. I felt a pang of loneliness for him, the desperate knowledge that he was off in the world, still living his life, not even having the common decency to be dead and therefore putting a graceful end to our relationship.