And All the Rest of Life Was Waiting

Chapter One

ROSIE

Now

I had always feared that one day the Gardaí would ring my doorbell and I would have to listen while their words spilled out. I had always wondered how they would say it. I’d imagined the scenario any number of times and in any number of ways, but one thing was constant—I was always alone. Answering the door alone. Taking the news in alone. And closing the door with that heavy future ahead of me, without him, alone. I don’t know why I had never made space for my husband and child in the scenario. I suppose it had always been just me and Frankie. At the end of the day it was us in the thick of it, trying to wade out from the waters of our past. So when I did open the door to the Gardaí that evening, I couldn’t help but think it was a dream because James was clinging to my leg, asking if he could try on one of their caps. And what they were saying was all wrong—it didn’t fit the script I had written in my mind. The words were a jumble and the name they said was not the one I had expected.

I awoke that morning before the alarm. Cian was asleep, his arm heavy on my thigh. I lifted it off without worrying if I woke him or not. The curtains were closed and there was such a lovely silence that I wanted to breathe it all in and let it fill me up. The weightlessness of it. When I wake like this, in the midst of my life existing without me, I question the tiniest details to make sure I am real. The open cupboard with my clothes hanging; the books lined up on the shelf by the window; the scar on my right knee, a leftover of that brief time in England, a symbol of what it meant to be Irish, there, then. I try and force it all to mean something, to represent me in a different way. I reimagine my memories and manage to transform their significance into something more. I become something of stature, temporarily.

There was no light coming through the curtains and the clothes from the day before lay on the floor. I took a sip of water and repositioned the pillows behind my head. My husband turned. I looked at his back, at some dark hairs sprouting from his shoulders. They made me feel uneasy. The fact that they belonged to him and were in my bed, and that I shared the bed with him was too much to think about. I had to close my eyes to balance myself. My mother had probably done the exact same thing—questioned the little decisions she had made; doubted the love she felt for my father, for us. Thought of running, did run. What would it feel like to be free, in another place where the past didn’t tug at your feet and the collective memory of who you were and where you came from meant nothing more than cloud?

My mother probably made up a new name when she disappeared. Even if it were only for a few weeks, she got to bite the plum, feel its juice dribble down her chin. The sweetness would haunt her, of course, becoming bitter like the taste of a man.

The time went by without me catching it, as it often does, and soon the alarm rang and I turned it off quickly. Cian stirred, like some animal on the lookout for prey. His arm reached around and rubbed at my stomach, then reached my boobs and he squeezed them slightly before adjusting himself. He coughed—a phlegmy, morning mixture. He didn’t look at me once. He went to the bathroom and the sound of him pissing seemed impossibly loud. I got out of bed and made my way to the door.

‘C’mere, how about making some scrambled eggs?’ he shouted from the toilet, without looking.

I didn’t answer with words but turned and smiled, or tried to. James was still asleep, his room painted in moons and stars. He looked so tiny in the single bed. I sat next to him and rubbed his face, caressed the cheekbones he took from Frankie. Cut too high. His lashes are like that of a girl’s and flick upwards. His mouth is full and soft, and reminds me of tulips. I never want to wake him; want to leave him wherever he is, twitching in a maddened dream. I shrug him lightly and his eyes open up new worlds. I wished he could exist in that moment forever, with nothing to take him into the miseries and hysteria of life.

‘Do you want some eggs on toast?’

‘Coco Pops!’

‘Coco Pops it is.’ I kiss his forehead and head to my duties that await like shadows.

The day could easily have been one of the countless others I’d end up forgetting. A day I would never think of or try to recall, a day in which I would not remember bringing James to school and being surprised that he slept—he normally chatters the whole way, commenting on whatever catches his eyes, delusions of what the world is; wouldn’t remember arriving at work on time, for once, and going up in the lift with Rafael, or how he held it open for me, how I smirked and looked back at him and felt my age; would never try and search my memory for what I had eaten at lunch or the songs I had listened to on the radio on my way home. All these irrelevant details should have floated into nothingness along with their numerous predecessors. But I did not know that later that evening would be when the Gardaí showed up at my door—one of them I knew, Paul, I think, he had been in my class at school—caps in hand, with words being flicked ablaze at my face like matches.

Maybe I would have remembered Rafael holding the door open for me. The way he met my stare and waited for me to look away. And when I looked back his eyes were still on me and I felt a little self-conscious and tried to make my hips sway as I walked. Even though we hadn’t spoken that day, I would remember the slight curls in his R sounds, the way he structures a phrase, all a little off, all still a little foreign.

After work, I drove home alone. Cian had already picked up James and they would be waiting for me to nourish them. I thought of stopping off in the village to pretend I had some errands to run but thought there’d be no parking and I’d only get annoyed with myself so I went straight home. I opened the front door, left my keys on the side table and walked through the arch to the kitchen to find Cian at the hob and pots bubbling. I felt guilty without knowing why.

‘I’m making spaghetti bolognese. There’s wine in the fridge.’

I opened the fridge and took out the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and poured myself a glass and drank half of it before looking at him.

‘Where’s James?’

‘Upstairs. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Want some help?’

‘No, chill out on the sofa there, sure you’re alright?’

‘Yeah, yeah, grand.’

I filled my glass then moved to him and scrunched his hair as I passed him and sat on the sofa. I have always preferred it when I have a reason to feel pissed off. Sitting on the sofa I felt tricked, conned by my own husband. How dare he make dinner and give me reasons to admire him, and why should I admire him for once doing what I do daily! I was sure he was doing it for some reason; something horrible was growing inside of me and I blamed him. For marrying me when I was at my weakest, when I was too fragile to say no. I was adrift when we met. Lost at sea.

I was only 20 and it was the summer that Frankie first tried to kill himself. I had just left the hospital. Frankie had been kept in to be monitored, his stomach pumped and a room full of silence. Alcohol called me by my first name and I followed, obediently. Again I was ashamed for what I felt, nothing of grief or sadness, just anger topped with regret. I think I had wanted him to have succeeded, or maybe that was the other time, in some way I wanted to be free of him, to cut him from myself like a gall-bladder; how lovely it would be to not be tied to my past. But Frankie was something that could never be cut from me, a shadow cast from a midday sun. Then I found a bar in the city and ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, then another, and then I moved onto Jameson with ice. I hadn’t eaten and it was night, outside the bar the streets were rowdy with promise.

Cian sat next to me on a stool. I felt his presence but did not look at him. There are times I wish I had stayed looking into the depths of my whisky, continuing to question how I could go on living with such heaviness inside of everything. But I didn’t. I looked at him and he was smiling. He was bloody beautiful and he knew it and knew that I knew it. Dark eyes, dimples. His smile was smooth and showed straight, big teeth.

‘How’s it going? I’m Cian, and you?’

I smiled to be polite. I was almost drunk, though, and am dangerous after whisky.

‘Do you live around here, Cian?’

‘I do yeah, up by Patrick’s street. And you?’

‘Not from the city. Just visiting a friend.’

That night he fucked me three times and later while he was sleeping I cried so hard in his toilet that I got sick twice. Stupidly I had told him my name.

‘Dinner’s nearly done there, do you want to get the little man?’

I put down my empty glass on the floor next to the sofa, walked to the kitchen and put my arms around him and tried to smell what he used to smell of. He turned and kissed me hard on the lips, I opened his mouth with mine and used tongue, bit at his lip. I felt him push himself against me, hardening, and then I pushed him away flirtatiously and went to get James. I couldn’t remember the last time we had had sex and suddenly missed it, the intimacy of it, the sweat and smell of it.

James was sitting on the floor with his legs wide open and Lego all over. He had built a low wall that went from one foot to the other and in the middle was a higher tower.

‘It’s the Big Ben.’

‘Wow, let’s finish it together after we get some food in you?’

‘Okay, and soon we can go there, can’t we, uncle Frankie said it’s like the coolest town in the world and that there’s like a huge Lego store bigger than Cork.’

He followed me down the stairs nattering. I cursed Frankie for sending him that postcard a few years before, for bigging his life up, for giving my son his imagination in the first place. It’s what he did, flitted into our lives and left with the wind, leaving me to invent grandiose stories to James, so that Frankie became somewhat of a legend. He did not know, of course, that Frankie was in London at a clinic, one that I would pay for and fight with Cian over, he only saw the postcard and heard about a Lego store that Frankie had never even visited. With distance I can hate Frankie, envy him, begrudge him everything, but bring him close, let me hear his voice and I want to envelope him, smother him with all the emotions I cannot name.

We ate dinner at the table, all three of us, and I thought if someone were there to take a photo it would be one I’d hang up, something that made us real, solid. Cian was the first to stand.

‘I’m gonna head up, I’ve got an early start. Come up when you’re done, yeah?’ And he winked at me and something dormant stirred.

‘I’ll be up soon.’ I said, and meant it, wanted it.

I told James to go and watch one cartoon and then it’s up to bed. I washed the dishes, slowly, looking out on the world and thinking of how Cian once blindfolded me and drove along the back roads. It was meant to be romantic, he had set candles in an old ruin of a church just beyond Myrtleville, but then Oh Danny Boy came on the radio and I weeped behind the blindfold so when he took it off, my face was wet and my eyes strained red. It was then I told him about my mother and we never even got out of the car.

Then the doorbell rang as I was drying the last of the plates. I walked to the door with James running from the sitting room. He probably thought it was Frankie. As I opened the door I saw the two Gardaí and they both lowered their caps and James clung to my leg and I realised that I was still holding the tea towel and I could feel hair falling in front of my face.

‘Rosie Moran?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe we could speak in private.’

‘Can I try on his cap mummy, go on, can I?’

‘James, get into the sitting room now, I’ll be there in a minute, now James!’

And then I felt his grip loosen and my legs seemed to become lighter and I found it hard to think I was really standing, that my feet were connected to anything at all. Only afterwards I realised I should have invited them in instead of having the whole conversation with the front door wide open.

‘We received a call a few hours ago from your your father’s neighbour complaining of loud shouting. They reported a disturbance.’

‘He was probably just drunk,’ I said.

‘We regret to inform you but by the time we arrived it was too late.’

I did not say anything because it was not clear at all what he meant, so no question formed for me to further anything.

‘From what we’ve gathered, he fell down the stairs and it was instantaneous.’

‘What was?’ I asked, already knowing, but needing to hear the words aloud, see their lack of substance.

‘Your father, Daniel Moran’s death.’

I thought of how I would tell Frankie. I imagined him at the clinic, trying to get better. What this would do to him, what it was already doing to me, I did not know. They talked a little more, about the body, where it was, what I’d have to do. Then I closed the door and James was at the doorway of the kitchen, looking at me with eyes I’d never seen. I smiled and told him it was nothing, that he could watch some more cartoons.

I took my phone out and searched for the number of the clinic in Cork. Tried to remember how long it was now, that he was there; when the last time it was I had called him. Hesitating, I pressed call. Each ring sounded so mechanic, like I could hear it making its way through wires. The phone on my ear felt hot.

‘Hello, Fellowship House Clinic.’

‘Hi, this is Rosie Moran here, I wanted to speak to my brother, Frankie, Frankie Moran.’

‘Frankie Moran, Frankie Moran...’

In her pause I felt a deja vu, my life was becoming one endless repetition.

‘Did you say you were his sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Frankie’s not here, he checked out a while ago now, I can check the date if you’d like.’

I hung up and everything around me shifted.