Angels (40 page)

“They're so laid back here,” I complained.

“Laid back?” Garv said grimly. “They make the Irish look as hardworking and efficient as the Japanese.”

On the fifth day it all came to a head when we showed up, once again, at the front desk. Even though we'd gone through the whole missing-bag thing with Floyd every morning for the previous four days, Garv had to explain it all afresh to him.

Unconvincingly Floyd pressed a couple of keys on his keyboard and looked at his screen. I twisted my head trying to get a look at it because I harbored a suspicion that the computer wasn't even switched on.

“Be comin' tomorrow,” he drawled.

“But you said that yesterday”—my jaw was clenched—“and the day before.” I thought of Garv having to wash my T-shirt and shorts in the bathroom basin again tonight and me having to put them on damp in the morning and be laughed at by the other well-dressed girls there. Then I thought of my bag filled with jewel-colored bikinis, flower-splashed sundresses, and, worst of all, my new unworn sandals and I became a little hysterical.

Even now when I think of those sandals my gut twists with pain.

Not because I'm a shoe junkie—my first love has always been handbags, really—but because Garv went to so much trouble to get them for me. I'd seen them in a shop in town the week before we'd left; I'd even tried them on. I'd been all set to buy them when into the shop came a woman with a baby. It was tiny, clearly a newborn, its delicate eye-lids fluttering with sleep, its marshmallow hands curled into fists.

I had to leave—I'm not exaggerating—I
had
to leave or I would have lost it and started crying again—and once I started, I found it very hard to stop.

At home, I collapsed on Garv. “It wasn't just the baby,” I ANGELS / 321

said. “I know it's stupid, but it was the sandals too. They were perfect, they would have gone with everything. And I left them…”

I hovered on the brink of a great crying torrent.

“I'll get them for you,” Garv offered, and a muscle leaped rhythmically in his jaw. “Where were they?”

“No, it's okay.” Anyway, I couldn't remember which shop, all I knew was that it was in Grafton Street. Next thing I know, Garv is placing a pad in front of me. “Draw them,” he says. “Put down color, size, everything you know about them.”

I tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent. Which only made me feel worse. It was a sign of how bad things were, of how close we were to toppling over the edge, if he had to employ such extreme measures to try to make me happy.

Like a private eye, he pounded the pavements in the center of Dublin, armed only with my diagram, and went into shoe shop after shoe shop with the folded piece of paper, asking people, “Have you seen these shoes?”

He tried Zerep, who didn't have them, but thought that Fitzpatricks might. Fitzpatricks hadn't seen them either and tried to send him to Clarks. But Garv said I wouldn't have been in Clarks, that their shoes were too comfortable, so they suggested he try Jezzie. Who tried to fob him off with a pair that were too low and didn't have a ridged sole. On his own, Garv tried Korkys, and though the staff couldn't help, a customer—a shoe aficionada—over-heard and insisted that the sandals were in Carl Scarpa. And sure enough, paydirt was hit in Carl Scarpa.

“I just hope they fit,” Garv said, opening the bag when he got home.

“They'll fit.” I was quite prepared to chop my toes off, if necessary. I was so appalled at the trouble he'd gone to, especially in view of my unworthiness, that I wouldn't have been able to admit to anything being wrong.

He held them up. “Are they the right ones?”

I nodded.

322 / MARIAN KEYES

“Your ruby slippers,” he said, handing them over. And though they weren't ruby—more of a turquoise, really—or slippers, I put them on, clicked my heels together three times, and said, “There's no place like home.”

Tightly we held on to each other and, for a while there, I thought we might make it. Isn't it strange that sometimes the memory of an act of kindness can cause more pain than the cruel stuff?

Meanwhile, Floyd just didn't give a damn whether the bag containing my sandals, and everything else, ever turned up.

“Where is it?” I begged. “It's been lost for nearly a week now.”

Floyd fixed me with a dazzling melon-wide grin. “Relax, mon.”

And maybe in other circumstances I would have. Perhaps if I'd had a proper night's sleep in the previous month, if my nerves hadn't been stretched until they were see-through, if I hadn't hung so much hope on this holiday. Instead I heard myself shout, “No, I won't fucking relax.”

Garv put his hands on my shoulders and firmly marched me to a pretty white bench. “Sit here,” he ordered. Resentfully I sat while Garv learned over the desk at Floyd. “Now listen to me,” he threatened. “That's my wife. She hasn't been well. She's come here to feel better. There's no beach, the weather is shit, the least you could do is find her bag.”

But despite his macho intervention, the bag didn't turn up till the final day and our mood didn't turn up at all.

At the airport coming home, the pall of depression that hung over the pair of us could almost have been photographed. We'd thought the holiday would heal us but it had only highlighted the divisions. Not only was I not pregnant, but we were further apart than we'd ever been.

As I thought about all the terrible things that had happened with the weather and the bag and the food poisoning (oh yes, two queasy tummies, one overworked bathroom, let's not go there), I wondered if Garv and I were jinxed.

ANGELS / 323

Then an unexpected terror got me as I understood that the disasters had actually been the best thing about the holiday—because it meant Garv and I had had things to talk about. The only times we'd been animated or in agreement had been when we were venting about how awful it was or when we were planning the various tortures we'd inflict on Floyd or the chef who had given us the bad swordfish.

For the first time ever, as far as I could remember, Garv and I were running out of things to say to each other.

THE ARRIVALS AREA
of LAX was choked with people waiting. As well as the Dublin plane, a flight had recently landed from Manila, and another from Bogota, and it looked like thousands of relatives had turned out to greet the passengers. I'd already spent almost forty minutes standing with a stretched neck, being jostled and shunted by the vacuum-packed throng. Every time the glass doors slid back to reveal yet another family group, a happy wail went up from somewhere, and a fresh heave had me stumbling all over my neighbors as people sought to burrow through to their visitors.

The more time that went on without my family appearing, the more lighthearted I became—they must have missed the plane.

Great, I could go home to Ireland, what a pity I hadn't thought to bring my stuff with me, I could just leave there and then. But at exactly the moment I'd decided they definitely weren't coming, my senses pricked up and my hope slid away; I still couldn't see them but I knew they were about to show, not thanks to any sixth sense but because I could
hear
them, their voices raised in disagreement.

And then they appeared. Mum with a mysteriously orange face—the mystery was explained later when I saw the palms of her hands, also a browny-orange color. She'd been at the fake tanning lotion again. No matter how many times we told her she just couldn't handle it, she wouldn't listen.

ANGELS / 325

I caught a quick glimpse of Dad, almost invisible behind an overladen cart. He was wearing khaki shorts. Fetchingly accessorized with varicose veins, argyle socks, and black lace-up shoes.

Behind him came Anna, and I got a surprise—actually a shock—when I saw her. She'd had her hair cut—
styled
. She looked great. And finally there was Helen, her long dark hair glossy, her green eyes sparkling, her mouth curved in a contemptuous smile as she surveyed the waiting multitude. Even from a distance, I could see what she was mouthing: “Where the fuck is she?” With a sigh, I positioned my elbows outward, as if I was about to do the birdie song, and prepared to push.

The reason for the delay? One of Anna's bags hadn't turned up, and only after they'd filled out the forms was it spotted taking a twirl for itself on the Bogota carousel. Also the cart wasn't helping.

Capricious and unpredictable, it had caused skinned ankles and bruised calves all around. Put it this way—if it was a dog, you'd muzzle it.

But I was happy to see them, happier than I'd expected, and I had a moment of feeling protected—Mum and Dad were here, they'd take care of me. But something about Dad's thin white-and-blue legs was telling me it wasn't fair to expect to be taken care of.

Instead, because I'd been in L.A. for three weeks already, I'd be responsible for
their
welfare—even though I hardly felt able to take care of myself, never mind the four of them.

With much barking of knuckles, I got their huge amounts of luggage into Emily's block of flats, and under a blue, blue sky we headed for the freeway to Santa Monica while they discussed my new look.

“Your hair hasn't been that short ever.”

“It must have been short when she was born,” Helen said.

“No, it wasn't.”

“How would you know? You weren't there. I have to say, Maggie,” Helen mused, “you look great. Your hair really suits you that length and you've a gorgeous tan.”

326 / MARIAN KEYES

I waited for the catch. However, the trap wasn't for me, but for Mum.

“A gorgeous tan,” Helen repeated. “Nearly as gorgeous as Mum's.

Hasn't she a great color?” she asked unkindly.

“Yeah, lovely.”

“I've been sitting out in the garden at home,” Mum said.

“Between showers,” Helen twisted the knife.

“The Irish sun can be very strong,” Mum persisted.

“Must be, if you can get that sort of color when it's pissing down rain.”

The sniping continued until—a mere six blocks from Emily's—we got to the Ocean View Hotel. To my surprise, it was accurately named; you
could
actually view the ocean from it. All that separated it from the vast twinkling expanse of the Pacific was a road, a line of palm trees, and a bike path. “Look,” Anna said, all excited, as two six-foot, toffee-tanned, ponytailed blondes Rollerbladed past.

“Welcome to California.”

Inside, the hotel was nice and bright and had a swimming pool and the advertised umbrellas, but Mum seemed edgy and distracted, moving around her room, opening drawers, touching things, and she only relaxed when she discovered that they hadn't vacuumed under the bed. She's bad house-keeper herself and she hates feeling outcleaned.

“It's quite nice here,” she finally conceded.

Helen was less impressed. “We came this close”—she held up her thumb and forefinger—“to staying in the Chateau Marmont.”

“She told me it was a convent,” Mum said indignantly. “If it wasn't for Nuala Freeman, who told me the kind of place it really was—”

“Glamorous,” Helen interrupted. “Full of the stars of screen and stage. It would have been great.”

One of the reasons they'd—at least Mum and Dad—come to L.A. was out of concern for me, and they hadn't even unpacked before I was called to provide an account of my emotional health.

Somehow Mum had backed me into a

ANGELS / 327

corner, thrust a concerned (and orange) face at me, and asked softly,

“How've you been these past few weeks, since…you know?” Up close, her neck was streaky but her eyes were kind and I wondered where I should start—“I found out for sure that my husband has a girlfriend, then I had mild bondage with a big-nosed man who didn't call me, then I ran into Shay ‘First Cut Is the Deepest’

Delaney again, who did his best to ignore me even though we'll always be linked, at least in my head, then I had sex with a woman with breast implants and she rejected me too. I've been to very dark places and behaved so out of character that I've scared myself and I'm still no wiser about what's going to become of me and my life and my future and my past.” So which part should I tell her first, I mused. The lesbian sex? Being tied to Troy's bedpost?

“I'm fine, Mum,” I said weakly.

Her loving expression remained on me and I noticed that she'd missed a patch just below her ear. For some reason this squeezed me with hopeless tenderness.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank God,” she sighed. “I was afraid you might go… a bit crazy.”

“What news from home?” I was keen to change the subject.

“Well, you heard about us being broken into, didn't you?”

“No! What happened?”

Moving her orange face even closer to mine, Mum told the story.

Apparently, one morning as Dad was going down-stairs to make Mum's cup of tea, he met an unfamiliar youth climbing the stairs.

“Morning,” Dad said, because an unfamiliar youth climbing the stairs was, in itself, nothing unusual. With five daughters, the chances of this sort of encounter were high. But then Dad noticed that the youth had two of his golf trophies under his arm. And that the microwave was by the front door. And so was the telly.

328 / MARIAN KEYES

“What are you doing with my golf trophies?” Dad had asked uncertainly.

“Ah, fuck!” the youth said moodily, bouncing the trophies onto the ground, bolting down the stairs and out into the wide blue yonder. It was then that Dad saw the key still in the front door—left there when Helen had come home the previous night—and the youth was no swain of one of his daughter's but an opportunistic, early-morning burglar.

“It was the mercy of God that your father got up,” Mum said.

“Or else the bed would have been stolen out from under us. And another night Anna came home scuttered, put some beans on the stove, then fell asleep.”

“I was still there when that happened.”

“Oh, were you? We could all have been burned in our beds.

Mind you,” she said ruminatively, “I suppose we could count ourselves lucky to still have beds to be burned in, the way things were going.

“Now tell me”—abruptly Mum changed the subject and dropped her voice to a hiss—“is my face a bit much?”