I love you.
On her way to see her naturopath about an irritating patch on the back of her left hand, Síle was stuck in a traffic jam on Astor Quay. She tried a few deep breaths. She knew if she arrived at Helen's office in a state of agitation she'd get the usual lecture about stress hormones and cellular toxins. To distract herself, she leafed through her bundle of post. Credit card offers, charity newsletters, and a couple of travel-stained kitsch postcards from friends visiting Budapest and New Zealand. There was an envelope in Jude's careful handwriting stamped Express Delivery that'Síle had been meaning to save for the café after her naturopath, but what the hell.
Reading the first line, she felt a little dizzy. She'd have liked to pull over for a minute, but then she'd never have got back into the flow of traffic. So she kept crawling forward in first gear, but her eyes dropped every second or two to the words on the page in her lap: I love you.
The phrase appalled'Síle. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen it written down, except in a novel, and not the Booker-winning kind. She supposed she and Kathleen must have said it a few times, in the early days, but she couldn't remember. People were wary of the words, these days, having heard them in too many Hollywood movies. I love you ticked like a bomb. It pretended to be in the present tense, but it had a future hidden inside it. It was hackneyed, heavy, too much to bear.
A courier on a bicycle snaked in front of'Síle, and she slammed on the brakes. She read the phrase again, and it lit her up.
She flicked through the rest of the letter. It was short, and it assumed nothing. I suspect the right thing to do would be to keep my mouth shut and back off, Jude had written. But I cant sleep till I let you know what's in my heart.
Well, what had'Síle thought was happening? She was so much older; shouldn't she have been wise enough to have seen this coming, reined it in before it ran away with them? A Gilbert and Sullivan line sang in her head: Here's a how dy do.
She'd been busy, that was her only excuse. She'd been doing her job—good morning, fasten your seat belts, beef or cod, thanks for choosing to fly with us—and on her days off she'd been going to the cinema with Kathleen, and checking her stocks online, and doing an Italian intensive, and taking Yseult jeans shopping while Jael was having her roots done. And all the while, Síle's new existence had been gathering speed, rushing along like an underground stream. She'd made the mistake of thinking that dinners out and traffic jams were her real life, and this connection with Jude was just a transitory preoccupation. But now she saw that she'd been living out her real time onscreen, sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
Síle read Jude's carefully inscribed sentences again, and tasted lipstick; she was chewing her lip like a child. A tremor went right up her spine. She thought, Yes, damn, yes, inching along Aston Quay, her hands gripping the wheel.
Síle could have taken the lift to Kathleen's fifth-floor flat that evening, but instead she walked up the stairs, whether as some kind of penance or to buy herself a little more time, she hardly knew. She had to pause on a landing; she thought maybe she was going to be sick. Jude's letter had woken her roughly. It wasn't indecision that was wracking Síle, not at all. It was the torque of a decision that she realized she'd made some time ago. A secret she'd been carrying like a tumour through her days.
There was no answer when she rang the bell. The time-sensitive light went out with a click. Where might Kathleen be on a Tuesday evening? Not ballroom dancing, that was Thursday; she and her younger brother had been a duo for decades, and won medals for their rhumba. Was she at the deli? Having a drink with one of her old college friends? Did the dry-cleaner's stay open this late? Something Síle had always liked was that she and Kathleen didn't keep constant tabs on each other, but tonight it felt like a strange dissociation; surely she should have some idea where her girlfriend was. Kathleen might have been kept late at the hospital; the new scheduling software was acting up, Síle knew that much. She knew so many things about Kathleen—the middle toe left askew by a childhood bike accident, the terror of ghost stories, the time she'd got engaged to an orthopedic surgeon—but it struck her now, standing outside the door in the dark, that there were whole realms of the woman that were a mystery to her. Questions that, if you didn't ask in the first six months, maybe you never asked at all. Síle demanded of herself now with a clenched stomach, Why did we spend so much time talking about news headlines and toothpaste?
She noticed she was thinking in the past tense.
She had a key to the flat, of course; she and Kathleen had swapped keys within a month of their first dinner. But tonight she couldn't bear to let herself in, make herself at home. She sat down on the landing carpet, her back to the door, her eyes adjusting to the dark. Usually by now she'd have rattled off a text to Kathleen, where U?, but she couldn't bear to; this time it had to be live.
The minutes crawled by. I'm an utter shit, Síle thought. I can't believe I'm going to do this. I'm throwing away nearly five years, five pretty good years. But then it struck her like a rush of cold air that the years were gone. You didn't stay with someone because of memory and gratitude, not unless you were a wife in some nineteenth-century novel. It had to be worth it today. How lazy I've been, drifting toward this moment! I should have got around to this before. Before Jude.
She dropped her head onto her knees. She felt such dread of what was coming, she was tempted to get to her feet and stagger down the stairs. Had she been cheating for more than a month already, did e-mails count? Did dreams? Jaysus, Síle, she thought in rage, if that's how it is, you should have done Kathleen a favour and left years ago. What a timid traveler she'd been, clinging to her raft till the very last minute! And how obtuse! Why was it only now, with an express-delivery love letter like a bomb hidden in her handbag, that she realized all she'd been missing, all she was starving for?
In traditional matriarchal households in Kerala, she remembered her father saying, a woman could divorce her husband simply by putting his umbrella outside the door.
It seemed hours later when the lift groaned; Síle lifted her head. Kathleen walked out, laden with bags. Síle blinked in the harsh light.
"Sweetie! What are you doing sitting here in the dark?"
Síle was about to lie and say she'd forgotten her key, but she kept her mouth shut.
"Is there bad news? Is it your dad? One of the nephews?"
She shook her head.
Kathleen stared at her, and then opened the door. While she was putting her shopping away, Síle stood by the window. Dublin was a shiny jet necklace. Kathleen opened and shut cupboards, walked into the bathroom and came back. How familiar her footsteps were, the small sounds of the flat. She didn't say a word.
When Síle finally made herself turn away from the window, Kathleen had poured herself a large glass of wine and was gulping it like water. "Is there a problem?" Kathleen asked, very managerial.
She nodded.
"I suppose it's this Canadian."
That threw Síle. Kathleen hadn't seemed the least bit curious about her correspondent, and Síle hadn't brought herself to mention Jude at all in the last fortnight. But then, Kathleen was an intelligent woman, with an ear for Silences. Síle hesitated, and said, "It's more than that."
"That's what they all say." As fast and poisonous as a snake's tongue.
"Who's 'they'?" asked Síle, confused.
"Fuckers who want a bit on the side."
Síle let herself down on the edge of the cream sofa. They'd picked it out together in a Habitat sale, she recalled; Síle had bargained the salesman down fifty quid because of a tiny stain on one cushion. It was still quid in those days, before the euro. Her history with Kathleen spanned the edges of two currencies, two centuries, two millennia.
"It's never as simple and grubby as 'I fancy something fresh,' is it?" spat Kathleen, setting down her glass with such a sharp clink Síle thought the stem had broken. "No, it's always som
ething profounder, some unfulfilled yearning."
"I don't want a bit on the side," Síle managed to say. "But I think you and me—I don't see how—are you happy?" she asked, her voice high and uneven. "Can you really say I've been making you happy, the last few years?"
"Happy enough," said Kathleen.
"Anyway, a bit on the side of what?" asked Síle desperately.
She could see Kathleen's gray eyes register that strike.
She rushed on. "I'm not accusing—"
"You'd better not be. Is it my fault?" demanded Kathleen.
"It's nobody's fault, we just lost it. Maybe we should have tried harder, talked about it, at least—"
"So is that what this is all about? You want a frank discussion, Síle, fine. Why does sex have to matter that much?"
Síle stared at her.
"It's just bodies rubbing together. We're not teenagers; there's more to us than that. You and I are so bloody compatible, we get on so well," argued Kathleen, "why does that one little missing piece have to wreck everything?"
"I don't know," wailed Síle, "but it does."
"Well, you're not getting any from this girl in Canada, are you, so why are you putting me through this?"
"No," admitted Síle, "but I want her."
"What good is wanting?"
Her mouth moved like a fish on dry land. "It makes me feel alive."
"You ruthless bitch."
"I—"
"How can you sit there and say that to me?"
And then Kathleen wept so hard her mascara ran. She wouldn't let Síle touch her. She ranted and called Síle names, used words Síle had never heard her pronounce before. Then she started to hyperventilate, and crouched down on the kitchen tiles, and Síle held her by the shoulders. Kathleen's white hands gripped hers; she hid her face in Síle's tangling hair as if her torturer was her only refuge. Síle's eyes stayed desert dry.
The worst was when Kathleen started apologizing for everything unattractive about herself, every bad habit she'd slid into, every small neglect or carelessness. She even said sorry for crying. "What can I do, what can I do?" she kept sobbing. No, perhaps the very worst was when she tried to kiss Síle, unbutton her shirt; when she begged her to come to bed. Kathleen's face was naked to the bone, lit from moment to moment by terror and fury and abasement. Staring down at her, what struck Síle was, I've never seen this face before.
Consequences
All luggage is interchangeable.
—ARITHA VAN HERK
Restlessness
Three weeks on, Síle couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been in a car crash; every muscle felt whiplashed.
How had she ever thought of Kathleen as cool and capable, emotionally self-reliant? The woman had cracked like an egg. She'd called in sick to the hospital, lived in her dressing gown, and stopped brushing her hair. Three evenings in a row, Síle had turned up to feed Kathleen toast and apologize over and over. They slept as tightly tangled as ropes; when Kathleen woke up crying, Síle stroked her head and shushed her back to sleep. They'd never had a more intense time together, it struck her now; it was a shadow version of falling in love.
But after a four-day rotation to Dubrovnik and Vienna, when she went over to Ballsbridge she found an envelope marked S. with a note in it that said This is getting me nowhere. Please slide your key under the door.
She felt relief, of course: Síle had to admit it. But also misery, that five years of their lives could fall away like dust.
Now the April tulips were waving like flags. "Might be best to play it a bit cool, with the Canadian," Marcus advised.
But Síle had moved beyond any kind of play-acting. Whenever she felt bad, these days, she rang Jude.
"I guess I should say I'm sorry you're going through this," said Jude, "or that I never meant to cause trouble, but that'd be a lie."
"Quaker," said Síle with a little snort. She wiped her face. "Forget what you should say, what do you want to say?"
The word went up like a rocket. "Hallelujah!"
"On Kathleen's side, or..."
"Mine," Síle admitted, tight-throated.
Shay O'Shaughnessy looked away across the clattering café. His generation of Irishmen and women married for life, she reminded herself; there'd been no such thing as divorce, in law or in their heads, and if they ended up separated they saw it as a mortifying failure.
"You've had an affair," supplied Orla.
"I have not!" But even as she was snapping at her sister, Síle knew this hair-splitting was absurd. Didn't every cell of her body spring to attention when she heard Jude's husky voice on the line? If geography had allowed, wouldn't Síle have driven to her house weeks ago, kissed that asymmetrical smile, tugged open those jeans? "There's a woman I've been writing to, in Canada," she said with difficulty. "She works in a museum. She's twenty-five," she made herself add, thinking, cradle snatcher.
Shay picked at his quiche.
"Are Canadians not a bit ... dull?" asked Orla.
Why did everyone come out with that one? "Are the Irish not all thick and ignorant?" Síle countered.
Shay managed a chuckle.
"Fair dues," said Orla. "So. Have you actually met this girl, or is this one of those chat-room things?"
"Mm, it sounds like an assumed identity to me," her father put in with his best attempt at whimsy. "I bet she'll turn out to be a male truck driver from Swansea. Cyber-dressing: I read about it in the Guardian."
"I met her on a flight," said Síle, meeting his eyes. Just like you and Sunita.
A long pause. "Well, I couldn't be sorrier about all this, especially for Kathleen, obviously," said Orla. "I must send her some flowers."
Síle stared at her plate.
"As for the new connection ... all I can say is, you must have a lot of time on your hands."
Orla busied herself with her salad, and Síle watched her with hatred. Why, she wanted to ask, because I'm not doing the sensible thing of staying in a sexless couple for the rest of my days? Because the things I'm feeling have no clear target, no report card, no gold ring?
The list of friends and colleagues to tell was endless; she resorted to the vulgarity of a mass e-mail. Síle here, I'm afraid I have to tell you all some sad news, that Kathleen and I have decided to go our separate ways... She'd phrased it euphemistically to protect Kathleen's dignity, but only when she'd sent it winging into the ether did she realize that what it really did was cover up her own guilt. Then she wondered what kind of e-mail Kathleen was sending out.
Some replied with concern and warmth, and some didn't reply. They were resolving themselves Silently into Síle's old friends and Kathleen's old friends—the couple had made no real ones together, Síle realized, which was significant in itself—and though she was hurt, she couldn't dispute the division. She didn't even have any photos of Kathleen, it occurred to her in the middle of the night; the neatly labeled albums at the Ballsbridge apartment contained five years' worth of trips and parties, but Síle couldn't imagine asking to go through them and remove a representative selection.
Kathleen had become businesslike, her old self—or some smashed, glued copy. A large box of Síle's possessions turned up in Stoneybatter by bike messenger, with a form to be signed for closing their joint account. Her neighbour Deirdre took it in, as she always did with parcels when Síle was away.
"From your friend Kathleen," she said. Not that Deirdre was naive, but friend was her generation's word for it. (The other neighbours insisted on believing that Síle was single as a result of her busy career.)
Síle had to come out with it, on the doorstep: "We're not, actually, together anymore, Deirdre."
"Ah, that's a sorry shame." A pause. "I've sometimes thought I'd give Noel the heave," she confided pleasantly, jerking her head toward her living room, where her husband read the paper all day, "only for the pension wouldn't stretch to two households."
This, oddly enough, did make Síle feel a little better.
"You're
lovely, asking all the grubby details," she told Jude on the phone that night, "but I'd rather spare you."
"You can't," the girl told her. "I'm up to my neck in this."
"But—"
"I've wrecked the happiness of a woman I've never even met. I broke my own rule," said Jude sternly. "I knew you were in a couple and I didn't back off."
"Possibly because I was beaming out come-get-me signals like some dog in heat," said Síle under her breath. She couldn't tell which of them started laughing first. She groaned. "This is all so messy. If only I'd been single when I met you."
"Like you pretended to be, at Heathrow?"
"I did not! Well, I suppose it was a 'lie of omission,' as the priests call it. What did you think when I got around to clarifying who Kathleen was?"
"I felt like hammering a nail through my hand."
"Ouch! Even your metaphors are butch."
"You know, most beginnings are as messy as endings," Jude told her. "Everything overlaps; it's like a lily pond. I don't think I know two people who both had the luck to be unattached when they fell in love."
Now, sitting over the Irish Times and a latte in her favourite café, Síle glanced down at the Liffey and was shocked by a soaring sense of buoyancy.
"Mm," said Jael, checking up on Síle by mobile from the train to Galway, "there's a special high you only get from dumping someone you stayed with far too long."
"You didn't like Kathleen, did you?" asked Síle, letting herself face it.
"Couldn't stick her," exclaimed Jael. "It was such an effort, making conversation about tennis or bloody cha-cha."
Síle felt oddly wounded. "What was wrong with her?"
"Oh, nothing," said Jael. "Kathleen's the kind of girlfriend you'd order from a catalogue."
"You bitch!"
"You betcha."
Síle took a long swallow of coffee. "What are you doing in Galway, anyway?"
"Launching some curmudgeon's collected thoughts on impotence and death in a fourteenth-century banqueting hall. I'd name him but there might be journos on the train."