Pack Up the Moon (5 page)

We both fell back to sleep shortly after that.

Anger

Clo would call me once a day

“Are you OK?”

“Yes!’

“Do you need anything?” “No.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

The call would end and we would both be relieved.

She didn’t get four weeks’ compassionate leave. She only lost a friend, he wasn’t family to her. Her pain wasn’t valued as highly. She returned to her stressful job the day after the funeral. She walked into the office to be greeted by seventy pieces of post requiring urgent attention, three press releases, a magazine shoot for Fruit and Veg Awareness Week and a very disgruntled client. She dealt with her post methodically. Her client was placated within minutes. She managed to write three press releases within an hour, meeting the deadline with time to spare.

The shoot, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Two underfed models, one dressed as a cabbage, the other as an apple, cold and cranky waiting for the fruit man to deliver the display. He was caught in traffic on the M50. The girls were fending off teenagers’ abuse of their fruit

like appearance while the photographer bitched about the

time. Clo remained professional throughout.

She didn’t get home until after seven. She entered her empty apartment, deflated. She pulled the coffee from the shelf. It slipped from her grasp and she could hear the thick glass jar hitting her head before she felt it. The coffee jar continued toward the floor. She nearly caught it but her grip let her down once more. It smashed onto her white tiles, the coffee grains bursting out of their glass prison in their bid for freedom.

“Enough!”

Heat blazed inside her. The erupting tears burned her eyes.

“All I wanted was a cup of fucking coffee! Is that too much to have fucking asked? Fuck, I’m not cleaning up! Fuck, I’m not dealing with this!”

She was screaming and moving towards the press. She started to pull out glasses, throwing them across the room, watching them hit, smash, then trickle down her kitchen wall. She aimed a cup at a picture of a boat sailing on blue sea. She threw it with the concentration and professionalism of a star baseball player. The glass shattered on impact, leaving the picture torn and hanging from the chipped

frame. She screamed and cried and danced on the coffee and glass broken under her feet. Then she stopped cold, her heart beating wildly, attempting to break out through her ribcage, her hands shaking and her thoughts blurry.

Enough.

She was sitting on her kitchen floor, moaning and halfheartedly attempting to sweep the fruits of her destruction

into a dustpan when the doorbell rang.

“Fuck off!” she roared knowing that it was impossible for any prospective visitor to actually hear her four floors

down on a busy street. She answered on the fifth ring. It was her mother.

“Clodagh, let me in!”

“I want to be alone.”

“Let me in for Christ’s sake!”

“Just fuck off!”

She buzzed her mother inside. She surveyed the kitchen while her mother ascended in the lift.

“Just leave me alone!” she roared at the counter before smashing the plate that lay inoffensively in the kitchen

sink. She answered the door a minute later.

“Oh love! Come here to me, you’ve snots halfway down your face.” Her mother took a tissue from her pocket and wiped her nose. “Blow!”

She blew hard and her mother held her while she

cried and swore. Her mother cried too.

Later, exhausted, Clodagh asked her mother to speak about the father she had been too young to know.

“He loved the Boomtown Rats. He loved their restlessness, their anger. He was political. He wanted change. Old Ireland is dead and gone, he’d say. He was passionately opinionated!’

She was smiling. Clo watched her softening with each memory.

“When he laughed the room laughed with him,” she said, still smiling. “He was stubborn just like you.” Clo smiled, not offended.

“He was always right even when he wasn’t. He loved the beach and he loved boats.”

Clo made a mental note to replace the boat picture. “He was an overachiever — he always had a moneymaking

scheme under his sleeve. He could drive me insane.” “Like me,” Clo said, attempting a smile.

“Like you,” her mother admitted, stroking her hair. The Hallmark moment passed quickly and Clo felt the

heat rising inside.

“It’s not fair. I’m so angry!” she spat.

“I know you are,” her mother agreed. “The state of the kitchen is a testament to that!’

Clo couldn’t help but laugh. She was under the impression that her mother hadn’t noticed the contents of

the other room.

“You know, when your dad died you were only five, but on the day of the funeral you broke every single cup

and saucer in your play set and they were plastic. I knew then that you understood that your dad wasn’t coming

back. That was your way. Times haven’t changed.”

Clodagh dissolved. “How?” she asked.

“Well, you’re still smashing things,” her mother responded.

Clo cried, for her mother, her friend, for me, for herself All the while her mother held her, safe in the knowledge that she would survive.

Bargaining

Noel called in every few days. He’d stay long enough to know that I was OK. Then he’d leave. He spent most of his time praying. He and John had been friends … no, they were closer than that. They grew up together. Noel was two years older than John, but they clicked. John admired all the traits that I had initially found so offensive. He liked that Noel didn’t follow the crowd — he liked talking with him about something other than the usual

football, cars, girl conversations that ruled his universe. John made Noel laugh out loud and until he was sore in

places. He would miss that. He would miss their religious debates; God versus science was an old favourite which they would return to over and over again.

God, please, don’t let me forget! If you had to take him, please allow me to hear his laugh!

He wished he could tell us that John was at peace and

that his death meant his resurrection in heaven and that

we should be happy for him, that we should celebrate his

homecoming. He couldn’t. His heart wasn’t in it. He missed his friend too much.

Please, God, make me understand.

He was working through his pain the only way he

knew how. He said Mass; he visited the old folks’ home, the hospital; he gave a scheduled talk in the school. At the end of each day he went to the home he shared with

Father Rafferty, a Corkman in his sixties. Father Rafferty would watch the news while Noel cooked them dinner. Noel would eat in silence, nodding intermittently at Father Rafferty who was dedicated to worrying himself

sick about the state the world was in. When Noel would at last escape to his room, he’d put Nina Simone on his CD player and listen to her sing about sadness while he

knelt at the foot of his bed with his hands clenched in

prayer.

Please God, I’ve devoted my life to you, take this pain away. I bow down before you. Take this loneliness away.

*

As I learned much later, Noel had met Laura at a cake sale. She had baked over four hundred queen cakes in support of breast cancer. She’d lost her mother to it, and she felt fundraising was the least she could do. She was warm and chatty. A lot of people don’t chat to priests, not in an everyday kind of way. Noel was disarmed. He enjoyed her easygoing ways and her openness. She wasn’t afraid of speaking her mind, but she wasn’t afraid to listen either. They went for coffee and she talked about her mother while smiling and laughing at old anecdotes. She told her sad tale with humour, free from guilt, and he

found it refreshing. He had found that he too talked about himself. This was new to him and an unexpected pleasure. They had met again a number of times, sometimes accidentally, sometimes it only appeared that way. They had never been intimate nor would he even consider it, but he had been feeling guilty about his new friendship. That was before John had died and now the loneliness

that he had felt so long was becoming unbearable.

Lord, I’m on my knees. Please, I be you, make this loneliness go away.

*

He grabbed his coat and without a word passed Father

Rafferty who was ironing his jacket. He closed the door behind him and walked onto the street, preparing to hail the first taxi he saw.

He arrived unannounced. Laura opened the door and smiled happily. She led him inside to her warm sitting-room. He sank into her sofa. Candles were burning on the mantelpiece. It was dark except for a lamp by a reading chair where her book lay opened. He had interrupted her; he had no reason to be there. His embarrassment caught him off guard.

“Would you be more comfortable if I turned on the

main light?” she asked, aware of his discomfort.

“No,” he apologised, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.” He bowed his head to avoid her gaze.

“I think that’s exactly what you needed.” She smiled. “Let me make tea and we’ll talk about it.”

He nodded his head.

Later she sat on her reading chair and Noel told her

about his friend who had been killed in an accident. He told her about his anger and his shame. He talked about his pain, his regrets and he even mentioned a few fears.

Then she was hugging him. Holding him close to her and he cried on her shoulder while she rubbed his back

and told him that he would be OK. He felt her breath on his neck and her cheek pressed against his. He inhaled her perfume and felt her breasts pressing on his tunic. He pulled away, startled by the tightness in his pants. “I should go:’

She nodded. “If you ever need anything.”

He nodded.

She walked him to the door and he hugged her despite

himself.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Any time,” she said sadly.

She watched him walk down the pathway and close

the gate. He didn’t look back. She closed the door.

Noel walked home. It took him over an hour, but it felt like minutes. His head hurt.

I wanted her. Oh God, help me, I’m so confused! Please, God, I am yours, give me strength!

Depression

Sean left the funeral and went straight to the pub. He sat alone at the corner of the bar, emptied his pocket of all his money, placed it on the counter in front of him and ordered a whiskey, then another one and another one. He kept going as long as he had the money to pay for it. He didn’t interact; he wasn’t there to be social or to get laid, which probably surprised a few of the regulars. When he fell off the stool, the barman stopped serving him. He didn’t argue or throw

shapes — he just took his money, pushed it into his pocket and meandered out of the establishment, his exit as silent as his entrance. He’d bought a few bottles in the off-licence next door, his Visa taking the hit, when he discovered that his remaining change couldn’t stretch to a kebab. He needed help leaving; the mixture of twelve whiskeys and fresh air had hit him hard and his legs were becoming unstable. He didn’t recall how he got home. He didn’t remember the mode of transport nor how he managed to fit the key into

the lock. He found himself sitting on his favourite chair, a tatty, ragged thing that, once you sat in it, swallowed you whole. Clo used to call it “The Lotus”.

He didn’t leave it that night. Instead he sat in the dark drinking from the bottle, not caring about any possible damage he could be inflicting on his tired body.

What’s the point?

He took a long-overdue week off work and there he

remained in his tatty chair, in his small apartment sitting-room surrounded by the books that lined his walls. He wouldn’t be reading for a while — his eyes hurt too much. The CD machine in the corner remained silent. Sound hurt his ears. The TV lay permanently idle. Food was a foreign concept; he’d forgotten how to swallow solids without choking. He couldn’t sleep. He just drank until there was nothing.

He ignored the telephone and the door. He was in no fit state and after a while he didn’t hear them. He’d fall asleep but his troubled mind woke him quickly. His head would loll, and then fall slightly; he’d pick it up, eyes closed. This would occur a number of times before he would finally succumb to a deep sleep.

John would be there and for a moment everything

would be fine. He would be sitting in The Lotus beside John’s hospital bed. John would turn to him and say: “Jesus, man, you look like shit!”

Sean would nod his head, smiling. “You gave us a scare,” he’d say and John would sit up grinning. “I do love the spotlight.”

“It’s not funny. We thought you were dead.”

Sean would move to the window, mesmerised by the glowing sun that seemed to dance in the air like a bright

orange balloon. He could hear John laughing behind him.

“Nobody dies — we go somewhere else, that’s all.”

Sean would try to turn away from the window, but his eyes would remain focused on the sun.

“Yeah. Well, I’m glad you stayed,” he’d say, battling to turn his face to John.

“I didn’t.”

Somehow released, he’d turn but it would be too late: he’d be facing an empty bed and then he’d wake, startled by his own cries. The dream was always pretty much the same. The odd detail would change; instead of a dancing sun it would be a yellow moon or a white cloud. Once it was a chocolate M&M.

He’d been drinking for five days when the key turned

in his door. Jackie, a girl he had been shagging, entered, still knocking.

“Hello? Anybody here?”

Unable to respond he remained seated, drunk, exhausted, haunted and suffering from a touch of alcohol poisoning. She stood over him, surveying the damage he had done over the previous five days: the empty bottles

that lined the floor, the cigarette butts towering over the ashtray, the smell of booze which almost took her breath away. His eyes were red raw. He was filthy, not having changed his clothes in days. His fingers were yellow and shaking. He was sweating profusely.