If You Could See Me Now (28 page)

“I can take it.”

Ivan looked uncertain. “OK, if you really want to know.” He took a deep breath. “I thought about the Borrowers.”

Elizabeth frowned. “What?”

“The Borrowers,” Ivan repeated, looking thoughtful.

“The television program,” Elizabeth said, feeling irate. She had prepared herself for whispers of sweet nothings, like in the movies, not this unscripted loveless conversation.

“Yes.” Ivan rolled his eyes, not noticing her tone. “If you want to refer to
that
commercial side of them.” He sounded angry. “But I thought long and hard about it and I’ve come to the conclusion that they didn’t borrow. They
stole
. They downright stole and everybody knows it, but nobody ever talks about it. To borrow means to take and use something belonging to someone else and then eventually return it. I mean, when did they ever give anything back? I don’t recall Peagreen Clock ever giving anything back to the Lenders at all, do you? Especially the food, how can you borrow
food?
You eat it and it’s gone, there’s no giving it back; at least when I eat your dinner you know where it’s going.” He sat back and folded his arms, looking cross. “And they get a
film made about them, a bunch of thieves, while us? We do nothing but good, but we get labeled a
figment of people’s imaginations and are still”—he made a face and made inverted commas with his
fingers—“
invisible
. Please.” He rolled his eyes.

Elizabeth stared at him openmouthed.

There was a long silence as Ivan looked around the kitchen, shaking his head in anger, and then returned his attention to Elizabeth. “What?”

Silence.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I told you, you wouldn’t want to know. So, enough about my problems, please tell me what’s happened?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath, the question of Saoirse distracting her from the confusing talk of the Borrowers. “Saoirse has disappeared. Joe, the man with his
finger on the pulse of Baile na gCroíthe, told me she headed off with the group of people she was hanging out with. He heard it from a family member of a guy from the group she’s with, but she’s been gone for three days and no one seems to know where they’ve gone.”

“Oh,” Ivan said in surprise. “And here I am rattling off my problems. Did you tell the Gardaí?”

“I had to,” she said sadly. “I felt like a snitch, but they had to know she was gone just in case she didn’t turn up for her hearing in a few weeks, which I’m almost sure she won’t be at. I’ll have to get a solicitor to go on her behalf, which won’t look very good.” She rubbed her face tiredly.

He took her hands and cradled them in his own. “She’ll be back,” he said confidently. “Maybe not for the hearing, but she’ll come back. Believe me. There’s no need to worry.” His voice was soft, but
firm.

Elizabeth stared deep into his eyes, searching for the truth, and smiled sadly. “I believe you.” But deep down, Elizabeth was afraid; she was afraid of believing Ivan, afraid of believing at all. When that happened, her hopes were raised up the
flagpole, waving and blowing in the breeze for all to see, and there they would weather the storms and winds, only to be lowered tattered and ruined.

And she didn’t think she could spend any more years with her bedroom curtains open, with one eye on the road waiting for a second person to return. She was weary and she needed to close her eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Six

As soon as I left
Elizabeth’s
house the next morning, I decided to head straight to Opal. Actually, I had decided I was going to do that long before I left Elizabeth’s house. Something Elizabeth said had hit a nerve; actually, everything she said hit a nerve with me. When I was with her I was like a hedgehog, all prickly and sensitive, as though all of my senses were alert. The funny thing is, I thought all my senses had been alert already, as a professional best friend they should have been, but there was one emotion I hadn’t experienced before and that was love. Sure, I loved all my friends, but not in this way, not in the way that made my heart thud when I looked at Elizabeth, not in a way that made me want to be with her the whole time. And I didn’t want to be with her for
her
, I realized it was for me. This love thing awakened a group of slumbering senses in my body that I never even knew existed.

I cleared my throat, checked my appearance, and made my way into Opal’s office. In Ekam Eveileb there were no doors, because nobody here could open them, but there was another reason—doors acted as barriers, they were thick, unwelcoming things that you could control to shut people in or out and we didn’t agree with that. We chose open-plan offices for a more open and friendly atmosphere. Although that’s what we were always taught, lately I had found Elizabeth’s fuchsia front door with the smiling letter box to be the friendliest door I had ever seen, so that shot that particular theory to hell. She was making me question all sorts of things.

Without even looking up from her desk, Opal called out, “Welcome, Ivan.” She was sitting behind the desk, dressed in purple as usual; her dreadlocks were tied up and scattered in glitter so that with every movement she sparkled. On each of her walls were framed photos of hundreds of children, all smiling happily. They were even covering her shelves, coffee table, sideboard, mantelpiece, and windowsill. Everywhere I looked were rows and rows of photographs of people Opal had worked with and become friends with in the past. Her desk was the only surface that was clear and on it sat one single photo frame. The frame had sat there for years, facing Opal, so that nobody ever really got a chance to see who or what was in it. We knew that if we asked, she would tell us, but nobody was ever rude enough to ask. What we didn’t need to know, we didn’t need to ask. Some people just don’t quite get the gist of that. You can have plenty of conversations with people,
meaningful
conversations, without getting too personal. There’s a line, you know, like an invisible
field around people that you just knew not to enter or cross and I had never crossed it with Opal or anyone else for that matter.

Elizabeth would have hated the room, I thought as I looked around. She would have removed everything in an instant, dusted it and polished it until it gleamed with the clinical glow of a hospital. Even at the coffee shop she had arranged the salt and pepper shaker and the bowl of sugar into an even quadrilateral triangle in the center of the table. She always moved things an inch to the left or an inch to the right, backward and forward until they stopped nagging and she could concentrate again. Funny thing was, she sometimes ended up moving things back to exactly the way they were in the
first
place and then convincing herself she was happy with them. That said a lot about Elizabeth.

But why did I start thinking of Elizabeth just then? I kept on doing that. In situations that were totally unrelated to her, I would think of her and she would become part of the scenario, I would suddenly wonder what she would think, how would she feel, what would she do or say if she was with me. That was all part of giving someone a piece of your heart; they ended up taking a whole chunk of your mind and reserving it all for themselves.

Anyway, I realized I had been standing in front of Opal’s desk, not saying anything, since I walked in.

“How did you know it was me?” I
finally spoke.

Opal looked up and smiled one of those smiles that made her look like she knew it all. “I was expecting you.” Her lips looked like two big cushions and were purple to match her robe. I thought of what it felt like to kiss Elizabeth’s lips.

“But I didn’t make an appointment,” I protested. I knew I was intuitive, but Opal was in a league of her own.

She just smiled again. “What can I do for you?”

“I thought you’d know that without having to ask me,” I teased, sitting down in her spinning chair and thinking about the spinning chair in Elizabeth’s office, then thinking of Elizabeth, what it was like to hold her, hug her, laugh with her, and hear the little breaths she took while she slept last night.

“You know the dress Calendula was wearing at last week’s meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how she got that?”

“Why, do you want one too?” Opal asked with a glint in her eyes.

“Yes,” I replied,
fidgeting with my hands. “I mean no,” I said quickly. I took a breath. “What I mean is, I was wondering where I could get a change of clothes for myself.” There, I’d done it.

“The wardrobe department, two
floors down,” Opal explained.

“I didn’t know there was a wardrobe department,” I said in surprise.

“It’s always been there,” Opal said, narrowing her eyes. “May I ask what you need it for?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s just that, Elizabeth, you see, is um, she’s
different
from all my other friends. She notices these things, you know?”

She nodded slowly.

I felt I should explain a bit more. The silence was making me uncomfortable. “You see, Elizabeth said to me today that the reason I wore these clothes was because it was either a uniform, I was unhygienic, or because I lacked imagination.” I sighed thinking about it. “The last thing I am is lacking in imagination.”

Opal smiled.

“And I know I’m not unhygienic,” I continued. “And then I was thinking about the uniform part.” I looked myself up and down. “And maybe she was right, you know?”

Opal pursed her lips.

“One of the things about Elizabeth is that she too is dressed in uniform, she wears black, the same stuffy suits all the time, her makeup is a mask, her hair is always tied back,
nothing
is free. She works all the time and takes it so seriously.” I looked up at Opal in shock, just realizing something. “That’s exactly like me, Opal.”

Opal was silent.

“All this time I was calling her a gnirob.”

Opal laughed lightly.

“I wanted to teach her to have fun, to change her clothes, stop wearing a mask, change her life so she can
find happiness, and how can I do that when I’m the very same as her?”

Opal nodded her head lightly. “I understand, Ivan. You’re learning a lot from Elizabeth too, I can see that. She is bringing something out in you and you are showing her a whole new way of life.”

“We caught Jinny Joes on Sunday,” I said, softly agreeing with her.

Opal opened a cabinet behind her and smiled. “I know.”

“Oh, good, they arrived,” I said happily, watching the Jinny Joes
floating in a jar in the cabinet.

“One of yours arrived too, Ivan,” Opal said seriously.

I felt my face redden. “You know she got six hours of undisturbed sleep last night.” I changed the subject. “That’s the
first
time that’s ever happened.”

Opal’s expression didn’t soften. “Did she tell you that, Ivan?”

“No, I saw her . . .” I trailed off. “Look, Opal, I stayed the night, I only held her in my arms till she fell asleep, it’s no big deal. She asked me to.” I tried to sound convincing. “And when you think about it, I do it all the time with other friends. I read them bedtime stories, stay with them till they sleep, and sometimes even sleep on their
floor. This is no different.”

“Isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer.

Opal picked up her fountain pen with a great big purple feather on the top, looked down, and continued with her calligraphy writing. “How much longer do you think you’ll need to work with her?”

That got me. My heart did a little dance. Opal had never asked me that before, it was never a matter of time for anyone, it was always a natural progression. Sometimes you only had to spend a day with someone, other times you could be there months. When our friends were ready, they were ready, and we had never before had to put a time limit on it. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh.” She was nervous,
fidgety. “I’m just wondering. As a matter of interest ...you’re the best I have here, Ivan, and I just need you to remember that there are lots more people that need you.”

“I know that,” I said rather forcefully. Opal’s voice had all sorts of tones I had never heard before, negative ones that sent blue and black colors into the air and I didn’t like it one bit.