No Way to Say Goodbye (2 page)

Mary began listing some of the endless possibilities. Was the hooded boy a metaphor for a death?
Poor Mr Monkels!
She worried about her dog until approximately three fifty at which time, having accepted that the link between a hooded boy and an ancient dog was tenuous, she considered whether or not the dream might have related to Penny’s disastrous love life. Then again, this disaster was on-going.
That might explain the running
.
Poor Penny!
But the kid was definitely a boy, not a girl, and after all, Penny’s love life might not have been the stuff of fairytales but at least she had one. It was just after four fifteen when she had begun to contemplate why she was alone.
Am I frigid? No, I like to get laid just as much as the next person. It’s very relaxing. Am I scared? Yes? No? Maybe. OK, this is getting too heavy. Change the subject. Am I a lunatic? Has grief driven me to the edge of sanity?
She smiled – in her head she was humming “She’s A Maniac”.

Although her ramblings distracted her, they had no effect on her elevated pulse or sense of dread so she refocused. Her dad had just had his heart checked and was healthier than a fourteen-year-old. Ivan seemed happy and healthy, although he was still adjusting to life after an acrimonious separation. It had been more than a year ago, but he hadn’t even attempted to find himself a girlfriend. It seemed a great waste to Mary as her cousin was kind, loving and not an ugly man. At around five she vowed to watch over him, knowing that he wasn’t built to be alone.

At six she was still uneasy. Maybe it was down to the rain that had started to fall just after she had woken from the dream. The pier had flooded last year and some of the cottages had been badly damaged. She had miraculously escaped for no other reason than sheer luck and there was no way she would be lucky twice. It was extraordinary that she’d been lucky once. Maybe fear of flooding was niggling in her.
Yeah, it must be that
.

Despite her outward appearance, which suggested a calm, cool nature to those who loved her, and possibly an impenetrable, cold one to others, Mary often worried about things that most people didn’t. She would often daydream about terrible events that she would undoubtedly survive while those around her didn’t. The end of the world was her recurring nightmare – she’d be left to stand in the centre of the universe alone, with nothing but thousands of miles of bodies and destruction around her. She wasn’t depressive or paranoid; she wasn’t insane or morbid. She was just aware that bad things happened and that they could and did happen to her. She didn’t have the comfort of viewing death and disaster as some faraway notion to be skipped over in favour of a conversation about shoes.

It was a belief long held by Mary and many of the towns-people of Kenmare that she was a curse to those who loved her. She had long ago become used to being called “Mary of the Sorrows”. Of course, it was used mostly behind her back but sometimes an individual slipped and more often than not she responded to the truncated version: “Mary of the…”.

People around her had died – her mother, her boyfriend and her son – and she had long ago accepted that her place in the world would be apart from the crowd. Her father had often attempted to disprove her theory – after all, he had survived – and she would smile at him, but it didn’t help that she would most likely survive him too, and that one day he would be a picture for her to lose herself in on a rainy day.

Mary put a basket of neatly folded clean clothes under the stairs: a four-day headache culminating in a sleepless night meant she was too jaded to iron. The phone rang and she considered ignoring it but curiosity was her downfall.

“Hello?” she said.

“Jesus, have you seen the rain?” It was Penny.

“Yeah,” she agreed, relieved to hear her friend’s voice. “Mr Monkels is like a pig.”

“Mr Monkels smells like a pig,” Penny retorted, and Mary laughed because she was right – his farts brought tears to your eyes.

“Are you better?” Penny asked.

“Yeah.”

“No blind spots, facial paralysis or partial blindness?”

“Nope, I’m back in black.”

“Excellent,” her friend noted. “Why don’t we celebrate and head over to Killarney to see a movie?”

Mary looked out of the window again. “It’s horrible out there. I was planning on a night in with a DVD, the rain at the window, the dog on my lap and a pot of tea at my elbow.”

Penny’s heart was set on the new George Clooney film. “I swear you’re such an old lady, Mary – how the hell are you ever going to meet someone if your idea of a great night is sitting in with a dog?”

“Oh, and going to the Killarney Cineplex is a great way to meet men?” Mary countered. “Besides, there’s a lot to be said for staying in,” she continued, while attempting to remove a chocolate stain from her cardigan, armed with saliva and her thumb. At the same time she realized that the cardigan gave Penny’s previous statement some credence so she took it off. She might be unwilling to look for love in a Cineplex but she wasn’t inclined to turn into Miss Marple. “Why don’t you come over?” she asked.

“Hmmm, let me see… George Clooney or you and a dog?”

“What’s the movie?” Mary asked.

“Who cares? I just want to look at something pretty,” Penny answered, true to form.

“And I’m supposed to be the sad one!” Mary shook her head in mock-despair.

“Yeah, well, ‘Penny of the Sorrows’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Besides, there’s nothing sad about wanting to watch that sexy bastard get up to a few tricks.”

“I used to love him in
ER
. He was so great with kids…”

“Yeah, that’s what’s so appealing!” Penny giggled.

Silence followed – they had reached an impasse. Mary wanted to stay within her four walls and Penny to break free of hers.

“Come on, I have a deep need to be shallow and a desperate need of distraction. If you drive, I can have a drink,” Penny pleaded.

Mary thought about it. “You always need distracting.”

Penny would have pushed, but she knew how Mary felt about crossing the mountain in the rain and also that, despite what Mary had said, her head probably felt like it had just been kicked.

“I have a bottle of wine in the fridge,” Mary said, knowing that would be the deciding factor in whether her friend chose her over a movie star.

“All right,” Penny conceded. “What’s the DVD?”

Mary grabbed it from the coffee-table. “
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
” she read off the label.

“What’s eating what?”

“It’s directed by Lasse Hallstrom.” She knew her friend hadn’t a clue or a care as to who he was.

“What?”

“He directed
Once Around
,” she read on.

Penny remained unimpressed.

“Which was a Sundance favourite apparently,” Mary continued pathetically.

“Sundance means worthy and worthy means complete crap.” Penny’s capacity to imbue her voice with disdain was quite theatrical.

Mary smiled. “Yeah, well, this one mentions nothing about Sundance, it’s about…” She read on silently.

Penny was busy weighing up her options. “An eating movie directed by a man who sounds like a weather system or George Clooney?” It was an unfair contest – but she didn’t feel like facing the mountain alone either and she had to get out of the house. Still, she needed more information before she committed to a night in – after all, she could always go to the pub.

Mary hadn’t noticed the actors’ names and, when at last she did, she knew the deal was sealed. “Hah! Starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio!” She heard Penny stand up.

“Open the wine, I’m on my way.”

2. Who is who?

Penny pulled a bottle of wine from the rack, reminding herself to replenish the dwindling supply. She was pulling on her coat when the phone rang and, thinking it would be Mary, attempting to put in a post-migraine chocolate order, she picked it up.

“Penn.” It was Adam.

Oh, God, no – go away
. “What do you want?” she asked, pissed off that he’d caught her off guard.

“You,” he said, and she sensed his sheepish grin. She wanted to punch his face in.

“Is that what you told your wife?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm and just a hint of bitterness.

“Don’t.” He sighed, and she wanted to cry.

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He’d said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him – and she truly did – he wasn’t hers. He had three kids and ran his father-in-law’s business. He belonged to his wife. She’d earned him – at least, that was how he’d put it when he’d broken off their affair for the last time. It didn’t matter that Adam was her first love or that Penny was his passion. It didn’t matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn’t matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn’t matter that he didn’t love the woman. It didn’t even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliché. He was married to someone else and that meant Penny was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman’s marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it.

“You were right to end it. I don’t want to be alone any more, Adam,” she said, tears tumbling again, much to her chagrin.

“I don’t want that for you either. I… I…” Clearly he didn’t know what to say – there was nothing to say.

She could hear him breaking down and now she wanted to hug him but she couldn’t. She was determined to be strong. “I have to go,” she said.

“Don’t,” he begged.

She hung up and sank to the floor, crying for the fifth time that day. She was going to cancel the stupid DVD evening, but then she became terrified that Adam would turn up at her door, and if he did, she would most certainly let him in, and once he was inside she wouldn’t be able to say no. But first she’d have a drink, just to settle her nerves.

Afternoon had passed into late evening and then to night. The town was silent, with few venturing out. Penny drove past the pubs, restaurants and shops, all brightly painted and featuring window-boxes, whose colourful contents absorbed the falling water thirstily. She had stopped crying, instead allowing the rain that coursed down the windscreen to do it for her. Sinéad O’Connor’s rendition of “Nothing Compares To You” had been playing on the radio and she’d broken a fingernail in her hasty attempt to change the station. Still, everything was fine now. She would go to Mary’s and they’d watch a DVD and she’d talk rubbish and forget about the sad, sorry, pathetic mess that was her world. Although she had often worried that her friend had given up on love, it was days like these that made her wonder if Mary was right. She wouldn’t admit it, though, not yet – she might be heartbroken but she still had hope.

At the window Mr Monkels stood up and barked hello to Mossy Leary from number three who had stopped to help Penny – she was battling to open her umbrella although she had to walk just ten paces from her car to the door. Mossy was in his late thirties with long dark hair in a pony-tail. He was skinnier than Kate Moss and had saucer eyes that Penny often joked made him look like a cartoon character. He was a part-time fisherman, part-time house-painter, part-time sculptor and full-time stoner.

Mary opened the door and waved at him. He gave her the thumbs-up, then headed off towards town on a quest for a few free pints. She smiled at her friend, who was cursing the umbrella and attempting to shield her head with a hand.

Mary had woken to Penny’s knock. Her watch revealed that hours had passed since her friend had agreed to come over. “I thought you were on your way?”

“I’m here, am I not?” Penny asked, with a playful grin.

“You live ten minutes not six hours away.”

“Sorry.” Penny pushed past her. “I got held up.” She didn’t elaborate.

Mary poured a glass of white wine from the bottle she’d had chilling in the fridge. Penny drank, then turned off Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to the sound of silence, which had been on repeat for most of the evening. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you maudlin?” Penny narrowed her eyes and adopted the pose of interrogator.

“No,” Mary said.

“Liar. Still, at least it wasn’t Radiohead. I swear I’d have left.”

Mary smiled. “I’m fine.” She topped up Penny’s glass.

“Good. I can’t do depressing tonight,” Penny said, as she slumped into a chair. She wrinkled her nose as Mary disappeared into the kitchen. “What’s that smell?”

“Shit in sunshine,” Mary said, returning. She handed Penny a plate of brown bread and smoked salmon. She had mouthed “shit” rather than saying it aloud – she had stopped swearing soon after she became a mother.

“Dyeing your hair?”

Mary nodded.

“Nice job.” Penny put her feet up on the sofa and made herself comfortable, with the plate on her lap.

Mary disappeared into the kitchen again.

“Hey!” Penny shouted.

“Yeah?”

“Mossy mentioned that Lucy Thomas was in next door earlier.”

Mary came back with some chilli nuts, which she placed on the table. “Oh, yeah?” she said.

Penny knew her too well to be fooled by her nonchalance. “I wonder if you’re due a new neighbour.” She smiled as she sipped and began to read the blurb on the DVD box.

Meanwhile Mary struggled with the curtains. “No way,” she mumbled, more to herself than to her friend. “She’s probably just checking the house for flooding.”

Penny was grinning. “She’s come all the way from Mallow to check for flooding? Yeah, that must be it.”

Mary looked out of the window at the boat that had docked earlier that week, slapping against the pier wall. “What’s it like in town?”

“Wet, windy, ghostly.” Penny was reading the back of the DVD with an expression of confusion on her face. “‘A prisoner of his dysfunctional family’s broken dreams in tiny Endora, Gilbert (Depp)’ – I love him! – ‘serves as breadwinner and caretaker for his mother and siblings following his father’s suicide, his older brother’s defection… Momma (Darlene Cates)’ – who’s she? – ‘is a morbidly obese shut-in’ – Oh, my God! – ‘who hasn’t left the house in seven years and her children include retarded Arnie…’ Wait a minute – DiCaprio’s retarded? You
are
taking the piss!”