Angels (7 page)

I
couldn't
meet him. Not now, not with all this shame. A ANGELS / 45

powerful impulse almost had me marching away in the direction I'd just come from and—after a frantic, weighing-the-alternatives session—only the fear that he might notice me running away stopped me.

But of all the times to bump into him, I thought wildly. Of all the times to have to play the game of How Did Your Life Turn Out? Why couldn't I have met him when I'd had a marriage I was proud of, when I'd been happy?

Of course, I didn't have to tell him how wrong everything had gone. But wouldn't he guess, wasn't it obvious…

My hollow legs continued leading me down the hill, straight into his path.

For several years I used to fantasize about meeting him again.

Time after time I comforted myself with meticulous plans. I'd be thin, beautiful, trendily dressed, expertly lit. I'd be poised, confident, on top of my game.

And he'd have lost his appeal. Somehow he'd have shrunk to about five-five, his dark-blond hair would have fallen out, and he'd have put on a ton of weight. But from what I could see, he still had his hair and his height and if he'd bulked out a bit, it had the unfortunate effect of suiting him.

Meanwhile, look at me—the sweatpants, the air of failure, the way my face had gone a bit funny and immobile. It was nearly laughable. The only thing I had going for me were the highlights in my hair—I'd been uncertain when the hairdresser first suggested it, but now it was clear it was a godsend.

Closer I got. Closer. He'd no interest in me, not at all. It seemed as if I could escape with my raw, white face, my dad's anorak, my recently separated bleakness. Then I was right up beside him, passing him by, and still he wasn't looking. And with a strange defiance I decided that if he wasn't going to speak, then I would.

“Shay?”

He looked, I have to say, gratifyingly shocked.

“Maggie?” He froze in the act of lifting something from the boot, then stood up. “Maggie Walsh?”

46 / MARIAN KEYES

“Garvan,” I corrected shyly, “Maggie Garvan now, but yeah.”

“That's right,” he agreed warmly, “I heard you got married. So, ah, how's Garv?”

“Fine.” A little defensively.

All was still—and mildly uncomfortable, then he rolled his eyes to playfully indicate shock. “Wooh, Maggie Walsh. Long time. So!”

Before he even asked it, I knew he was going to. “Any kids?”

“No. You?”

“Three. Little monkeys.” He made a face.

“I bet. Hahaha.”

“You look fantastic!” he declared. He was either blind or insane, but such was his affection that I tentatively began to half believe him.

“How's your mum?” As if he was genuinely interested. “How's the cooking?”

“Ah, she gave up on it.”

“She's some gal,” he said admiringly. “And your dad? Still driven mad by the lot of you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what are you up to these days?”

“Paralegal stuff.”

“Yeah? Great.”

“Yeah, great. You?”

“Working for Dark Star Productions.”

“I've heard of them.” I'd read something about them in the paper, but couldn't remember what exactly, so I said, “Yeah, great,” a bit more.

And then he said, “Well,
great
to see you,” and stuck out his hand. I looked dumbly at it—only for a second; he was expecting me to shake it. As if we were business colleagues. As I rubbed my palm against his, I remembered that he used to hold that hand over my mouth. To muffle the sounds I was making. When we were having sex.

How weird life is.

ANGELS / 47

Already he was moving away. “Tell your parents I said hello.”

“And Garv?” I couldn't help it.

“Sure. And Garv.”

As I walked away I was fine. I couldn't believe it. I'd finally met him, and spoken to him, and I was fine. All those years wondering about it and I was fine.
Fine
. On a huge high, I danced toward home.

The minute I was inside the house I started to shake. so badly I couldn't get my fingers to undo the zipper of the anorak. Too late, I remembered that I shouldn't have been nice to him. I should have been cold and unpleasant after the way he'd treated me.

Mum appeared in the hall. “Did you meet anyone?” she asked, her antipathy to me wrestling with her social curiosity.

“No.”

“No one at all?”

“No.”

She'd loved Shay Delaney. He'd been a mother's dream, already manly-looking and with a golden-stubbled jaw while the other

“youths” were still raw and unformed. This she put down to the fact that Shay's father had left them, and Shay had to be the man of the house.

The other lads in the gang—Micko, Macker, Toolser, even Garv—were sullen around adults; they found it impossible to maintain eye contact with anyone more than a year older than they were. But Shay, the only one of his contemporaries to be called by his real name, as I recall, was perpetually good-humored. Almost, at times, flirtatious. Claire, who was a couple of years older than he was, used to say wryly, “I'm Shay Delaney and I always get what I want.”

But I was too busy for one of Mum's avid interrogation sessions.

(“Did he have a big avid interrogation sessions. (“Did he have a big car?”“I believe his wife's very glamorous?”“Did the father ever leave the floozy and come home?”) I had to lie on my bed and tremble and think about Shay.

48 / MARIAN KEYES

He'd been in the same year in school as Micko, Macker, Toolser, and Garv, but he wasn't fully part of their gang; his choice, not theirs, they'd have been delighted to be first best friends with him.

He'd seemed to float between several factions and was welcomed by all. He was just one of those people who had—although I wouldn't have known the word for it in those days—charisma.

Claire articulated it best by saying, “If Shay Delaney fell into a pit of shit, he'd come out smelling of Chanel No. 5.”

Not only was he noticeably good-looking, but he had the decency not to rub people's noses in it, so he got a rep as a nice person in the bargain. And, of course, the tragedy of his father having walked out on the family generated a lot of sympathy for him.

Because he looked older and had the confidence and charm to smooth-talk his way past doormen, he went places that we didn't and inhabited worlds different from ours. But he chose to return to us, and he managed never to sound as if he was boasting when he regaled us with stories of drinking crème de menthe in a nurses'

dorm or going to some rich girl's twenty-first birthday party in Meath. Of course, he'd always had lots of girlfriends; they'd usually left school and were either working or in college, which impressed the other lads no end.

Anyway, I'd been going out with Garv for about six months and I was perfectly happy with him—then Shay Delaney began to pay attention to me. Giving me warm smiles and one-on-one conversations so low they excluded everyone else. And it seemed as if he was always
watching
me. We'd all be there, hanging around a wall, smoking, pushing each other—the usual messing around—and I'd look up to find his gaze upon me. If he'd been anyone else, I'd have assumed that he was flirting, but this was Shay Delaney and he was way out of my price range.

And then, after a week when he'd cranked up the intensity of his smiles and intimate conversations, there was a party. A fluttering in my gut let me know that something was going to happen and, sure enough, when Garv had been sent out to buy ANGELS / 49

more beer, Shay headed me off as I emerged from the kitchen, then pulled me into the cupboard under the stairs. I protested breathlessly, but he laughed and shut the door behind us; after some half-teasing compliments about how I was driving him mad, he tried to kiss me. Squashed up against his bigness in the dark, confined space, finally knowing that I hadn't imagined his interest in me, I felt him move his face down to mine and it was as if every dream I'd ever had had come true.

“I can't,” I said, turning my head away.

“Why not?”

“Because of Garv.”

“If you weren't with Garv, would you let me?”

I couldn't answer. Surely it was obvious?

“Why me?” I asked. “Why are you bothering with me?”

“Because I can't help myself,” he said, pulling his thumb along my mouth and making me dizzy.

I never really got to the bottom of why he wanted me. I was nothing like as good-looking as his other girlfriends, or as sophisticated. The best I could come up with myself was that as his father had left them and his home life was a bit chaotic, I represented stability. That my normalness was the most attractive thing about me.

So, shallow cow that I was, I broke it off with poor Garv. We kind of pretended that it was a mutual thing and insisted that we'd stay friends and all that other crap you talk when you're a teenager, but the truth of the matter was that I dumped Garv for Shay. Garv knew it as much as I did, and from the moment Shay had decided he wanted me, Garv hadn't stood a chance.

Later that evening Dad sidled into my room, a brown paper bag under his arm. “McDonald's!” he declared. “Your favorite.”

When I'd been eleven, perhaps, but I welcomed the company.

“Chicken nuggets,” he announced proudly. “With two different dips.”

“What's the occasion?”

50 / MARIAN KEYES

“You have to eat. And your mother”—he paused and sighed, his expression wistful—“well, she tries her best.”

Since the night I'd left Garv, the mere thought of food had been anathema—it didn't make me feel sick, just amazed. But this evening I was going to have to try because as well as the chicken nuggets, Dad had also gotten me a large fries and a Coke, and by the look of things, a happy meal for himself. It came with a free robot.

“Eat a fry thing,” he tempted. (He feels silly calling them “fries.”

The real name, he feels, is “chips.”) I'd almost have preferred to eat the robot, but because I felt sorry for him, I tried. The chip (or fry, if you prefer) sat in my mouth like a foreign body. He watched me anxiously and I attempted to choke it down my closed throat.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked. “Brandy, vodka, cider?”

I was stunned. That was one of the strangest questions I've ever been asked in my entire life, bar none. The only time my family ever has a drink with their meals is on Christmas Day when the bottle of warm Blue Nun is wheeled out—always assuming that it hasn't been discovered by one of my sisters and drunk the night before. Besides, there wasn't any—what had he suggested?—brandy, vodka, or cider in the house. Then I realized that Dad wasn't
offering
me a drink. He was simply curious, trying to gauge how bad off I was.

I shook my head. “I don't want a drink.” That would be a huge mistake. When I was depressed, alcohol never cheered me up; in fact, it probably made me worse—maudlin and self-pitying. “If I got drunk I'd probably kill myself.”

“Good, then. Marvelous.” Suddenly he was as happy as his meal.

He ate with relieved gusto, attempted to play with his robot—“What does this thing do?”—then departed.

A few minutes later he was back. “Emily's on the phone.”

EMILY IS MY
best friend. Best
girl
friend, that is, and actually since Garv and I have gone weird on each other, probably best friend.

Gawky twelve-year-olds, we met at secondary school and instantly recognized in each other a kindred spirit. We were outsiders. Not total pariahs, but we were a long way from being the most popular girls in the class. Part of the problem was that we were both good at sports: genuinely cool girls smoked and faked letters from their parents saying they had a cold and had to skip gym class. Another black mark against us was that we'd no interest in the usual teenage experimentation with cigarettes and alcohol. I was too terrified of getting into trouble and Emily said it was a waste of money. Together we pronounced it “stupid.”

At school Emily was small, skinny, and looked like E.T. with a bad perm. A far cry from how she looks today. She's still small and skinny, which we now know to be a Good Thing, right? Especially the skinny part. But the bad perm (which wasn't a perm at all, but the real thing) is just a distant memory. Her hair is now swishy and glossy—very, very impressive—even though she says that in its natural state she could still double for a member of the Jackson Five. To get her hair fully frizz-free, her hairdresser sometimes has to put his foot on her chest and tug hard.

Her look is very pulled together and confident. When a 52 / MARIAN KEYES

certain style is in vogue, I usually buy something from the “new look” wardrobe and team it with the rest of my “old look” wardrobe and think I'm doing pretty well. But not Emily. For instance, remember when the rock-chick look was in? I bought a T-shirt that said “Rock Chick” in pink, shiny letters and I thought I was it.

Emily, however, appeared in bandage-tight snakeskin jeans, purple stiletto-heeled cowboy boots, and a pink leather Stetson. But instead of looking preposterous, she made me want to applaud.

She's also a woman who knows how to accessorize. Colored shoes (a color other than black, that is), handbags shaped like flowerpots, kooky barrettes in her hair if the occasion demands it.

I'm not a total klutz. I read magazines, I'm an enthusiastic shopper, and I take a keen interest in skirt lengths, heel shapes, and the light-diffusing qualities of foundation. But you only have to look at my single friends to see that they're all thinner and more glamorous than me and their makeup bags are cornucopias of breaking-news wondrousness. While I'm still reading about something, they're already wearing it. (Do you know how long it took me to realize that blue shimmer shadow was back in? Honestly, I'd be too ashamed to tell you, and even though it's a cliché, it
is
something to do with having a man and not being “out there.”) Despite our divergent lifestyles and living several thousand miles apart, my friendship with Emily has endured. We E-mailed each other two or three times a week. She'd tell me about all her disastrous relationships, then she'd debrief me on my dull married life, then we'd both go home happy.