Alexandra, Gone (19 page)

He opened the door roughly and, with a big sleepy head and wearing boxer shorts and a
GO WEST
T-shirt, he yelled, “What?” Then he wiped his eyes, focused, and saw who it was. “Jane.”

“Tom,” she said and pushed past him into the house. He followed her into his kitchen, where she set about finding the coffee.

“Second shelf on the left,” he said.

She located it and made some.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“We’re going to spend the day together,” she told him.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Jane, I don’t want this.”

“Want what? You don’t want to spend the anniversary of your wife’s disappearance with the woman who recently called you a fucking bastard? Fair enough, but tell me, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t remember you exactly calling me a fucking bastard.”

“Must have been in my head,” she said.

He sat down at his counter. “I was thinking I’d stay in bed.”

“No,” she said, “out of the question.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to come to Dalkey with me.”

“You’re joking.”

“I think we should walk the streets she walked, and I think we should talk and reminisce, and then maybe we could get some lunch, and after that we’ll hand out some of those flyers you keep in that black bag of yours by the door, and maybe we’ll make our way into town and we’ll stay there until it gets dark and this day is over.”

Tom thought about it for a moment or two, then nodded. He went up to his bedroom and came down dressed and ready.

They walked together through the village of Dalkey, and as they walked they handed flyers to anyone who would take them.

After a while Jane decided to broach the subject they had both been avoiding.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You were right,” he said, “perfectly right.”

“I was taking out my own frustrations on you,” she said, “and while I’m never going to be able to comprehend how a man who loves his wife as much as you love Alexandra could possibly be with that woman, I’m still on your side.”

“Alexandra’s gone,” he said, “and I miss her so much I ache, and I’m so terrified that I swear it’s brought me to the brink of insanity and I’m just holding on, and for a while that woman helped me do that. I’m not making excuses. I’m just telling you the way it is.”

“Okay,” she said, “and again, I’m sorry.” She handed a flyer to a woman pushing a pram. The woman looked at it for a second and then crumpled it right in front of them. “What a cow,” Jane said, and Tom pushed her ahead.

“I ended it with Jeanette,” he said. “Actually, if I’m honest, I treated her pretty poorly.”

“What did you do?”

“I pushed her out the door and slammed it in her face two minutes after you left.”

“Oh, that is a poor show.”

“I blame you,” he said, and he grinned.

“That’s funny,” she said.

There had been no developments since the reconstruction had aired. The police had received a number of calls after the show, but none of them had panned out. Tom was at a loss as to what to do next, and part of him wished that he could just let go.

“How about we get a drink?” he said.

“Love to,” she said.

Tom put the flyers back into the black bag, and together they walked to the pub.

On the last day of June, Leslie sat up in her hospital bed. The nurse had just taken blood and the trainee doctor had just taken her history for the tenth time. She was asked if she wanted something to help her sleep, but she declined—she wanted to spend as much time with her breasts and womb as possible. She was wearing a nightshirt that Jane had bought for her, and under her bed were slippers from Elle. She moisturized her face and put balm on her lips. When the woman across the way tried to make eye contact, she pretended to read a magazine, and when the woman disappeared into the toilet, she jumped out and pulled the curtain around her bed.

The woman in the bed opposite watched the clock, waiting for visiting hour, but Leslie didn’t expect any visitors because she had been adamant that she wanted to be alone.

Jim was the first to appear from behind the curtain with a bag of fruit and a bottle of 7UP raised high.

“I told you not to come.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to say anything else,” he said, and he sat on the chair by her bed.

“I can’t believe you are ignoring my express wishes.”

Jane called out Leslie’s name, and Jim opened the curtain. “She’s here,” he said, and he turned back to Leslie. “Looks like I’m not the only one.”

Jane appeared with a Brown Thomas bag filled with moisturizer, perfume, and a pair of candles. “They’re from Elle too,” she said, “and I know it’s weird to give you candles, but they smell so good.”

Leslie sighed. “Thank you.”

Elle appeared, going on about the toilets. “My God, where are we, Basra? There was blood on the floor. Make sure you wear your slippers everywhere.”

Leslie nodded that she would, and Jim got up and pulled two more chairs over so that the girls could sit, and just as they sat, Tom appeared with a brown bag full of sweets and mints.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Leslie said, and she smiled and shook her head. “What are you doing here?”

“Why wouldn’t I come?” he said. “After everything you’ve done for me.”

Elle got up and let him sit down, and she sat at the end of the bed. Jane introduced Tom to Jim, and they chatted happily about the building trade dying on its feet. Jim had read an interesting article on the subject, and he was interested to hear Tom’s point of view. Tom explained he had closed up shop at the end of ’07 and he was happy to see the back of his business.

“So what are you doing now?” Jim asked.

“Well, aside from looking for my wife, nothing.”

“What would you like to do?”

Tom thought about it and shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“Well,” Jim said, “the world is your oyster.”

“I suppose it is.”

Jane and Elle fussed over Leslie, and she pretended she didn’t like it, but she couldn’t conceal her joy.

“When this is done,” Elle said, “and when you’re feeling better, we’ll do something fun.”

“Can’t wait.”

“And you know that if things are a little bleak in the hospice, there is plenty of room at my place,” Jane said. “The house is so empty without Kurt and Irene.”

Leslie couldn’t believe Jane’s kindness. It took her by surprise, and looking around at the people she now had in her life moved her to tears.

Elle squeezed her hand. “You’re not alone anymore, pal.”

“I know,” she said. She wiped away her tears and opened the bag of chocolate. “Who wants chocolate?”

They all dug in, and even though Leslie couldn’t eat, she felt full.

11
“Simple and True”

Like a rainbow after a shower

I don’t regret a day, not one single hour.

Ah bring on the bigger things I can’t help but follow,

without you by my side my heart would be hollow.

Jack L,
Universe

July 2008

Breda had refused to get out of bed since the television reconstruction of Alexandra’s disappearance. Her daughter Kate gave her sponge baths, and her husband sat with her and encouraged her to eat the food that Kate and Eamonn’s wife, Frankie, took turns to cook and deliver. She’d take a few bites but only when her husband pleaded with her and only to satisfy him. It was not Breda’s intent to starve herself or to cause pain to the people she loved, and if she could have summoned the mental and physical strength to get up, she would have.

“Look, love, it’s shepherd’s pie,” Ben Walsh said to his wife, raising the fork toward her mouth. “Frankie made it according to your own recipe.”

Breda closed her eyes and opened her mouth, the food fell in, and Ben cleaned off the tiny amount that fell out with a tea towel. She didn’t chew. Instead it just sat in her mouth until it had melted enough for her to swallow.

“Eamonn’s downstairs. Would you like to see him?”

She blinked a few times, and he wondered if her eyes were dry or whether she was now resorting to communication through the medium of eye movement.

“Kate will be over tonight with fresh clothes, and she’ll help you wash,” Ben said, “and I’ll be downstairs, so maybe afterward you could come down and join us for a while. I can put a duvet on the sofa. What do you think, love?”

Breda closed her eyes and then opened them and nodded slightly.

Ben smiled at her. “Great, great stuff. I’ll tell the kids.”

He took the tray off the bed and walked out, closing the door behind him.

Breda lay there motionless, waiting for sleep to come.

Ben joined Eamonn downstairs. Eamonn hung up from a call and turned to his dad. Taking the tray from him, he noticed that the shepherd’s pie was not even half eaten.

“We need to get a doctor out here,” he said.

“I know,” Ben said. “We will.”

“When?”

“When your mammy says it’s okay.”

“Dad, my mother is in no fit state to decide that.”

“She’s just sad, son.”

“No, Dad. She
was
just sad; now it’s more sinister.”

Ben walked outside and lit a cigarette. Eamonn followed him, grabbed a plastic deck chair and sat beside him.

“You can’t hide from this, Dad,” he said. “You could hide from Alexandra, but not this.”

Ben stayed silent because his son was right. He had hidden from the reality of the loss of his daughter for months. He had pushed her away into a tiny corner of his mind because to think about her and to allow himself to feel the emotions he had felt those first few weeks would have been unbearable. His pain turned to anger, and in the absence of an aggressor he had turned on Tom. He had loathed him since that day over a year before when Alexandra had walked out her door and vanished. He had decided that even if Tom had been working when they lost her and even if he had loved Alexandra, his love hadn’t been enough to keep her safe. He didn’t care that it was cruel and unkind to blame the man who’d driven himself half mad to find her, because the only time he had felt better in the past year was when he was making Tom feel worse. Eamonn coped by pretending that Alexandra hadn’t been as happy as she had pretended to be and that mentally she hadn’t been capable of accepting her life as it was. She had forfeited a career she’d worked hard to succeed in for a baby that never came. She had tried hormone injections and four rounds of IVF, acupuncture, herbs, tonics; she had given up smoking, joined a gym, changed her eating habits; and although she had maintained a happy and casual façade, he had known she was lying, he had known that she was desperate to be a mother, and he had known that every single month and every negative test was eating away at his sister until there was little of the real her left. At least that’s what he told himself, because it was easier to believe that she had chosen to walk away from her own life or even that she’d thrown herself over Dalkey pier than to face the horrifying alternatives. And so again, while he didn’t hold the same anger as his father, there was a large part of him that held Tom accountable for the loss of his sister. The difference between Eamonn and his father was that since the reconstruction and Breda’s subsequent withdrawal, Ben had realized, while sitting on plastic chairs in their back garden, that Tom was as helpless in the disappearance of Alexandra as he now found himself in the face of his wife’s mysterious illness. All the anger that he’d built up to protect himself from true suffering was slowly dissipating, the pain was slowly returning, and he now found himself experiencing the darkness that Tom had been experiencing all along.

“Call the doctor,” he said to his son after the longest time, “and call Tom.”

“What are we calling him for?” Eamonn said.

“Because your mammy’s fond of him and he’ll come,” Ben said.

Eamonn nodded and walked inside with his phone to his ear, leaving his father alone to smoke and to breathe through the pain that finally he allowed himself to feel.

Tom arrived just as Kate was leaving. She hugged him and thanked him for coming, and he told her he was delighted to have been asked. He had attempted to make contact with Breda a few times within the previous five weeks but had been told it would be better to stay away. Ben came out from the sitting room, and much to Tom’s surprise he offered his hand. Tom shook it.

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “Alexandra, well, it wasn’t your fault any more than mine or her mammy’s. It was just something terrible that happened.”

Tom didn’t know what to say. His hands shook and his lip trembled. “Thank you.”

Ben slapped his back. “She’s upstairs. The doctor’s been here and he gave her something to sleep, but she’s been awake awhile and I know she’d love to see you.”

Tom walked up the stairs to Breda’s room. It was lit by one lamp by the side of her bed. The room smelled of fresh blankets, and Breda smelled of Kate’s perfume. She was thinner than ever and her veins stood out more. He sat in the chair by her bed and took her hand in his. She looked at him, but he wondered if she saw him at all.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, “and I’m not the only one.”

She tried to smile—it was the least she could do for poor Tom, who was kind enough to visit with her.

“I’m scared,” he said after a minute or two. “I’m scared that you let your mind go to the dark place and that you got stuck there. Did you get stuck there, Breda?”

Tears welled in her eyes and she nodded.

“You need to come back,” he said. “You need to be strong, because we can’t lose you too.”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and even her mumble sounded raspy.

“Don’t be sorry. Just come back.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means if a broken spirit pleases God, that is what I’ll give Him.”

“Breda, you lying here is not going to bring Alexandra back.”

“Maybe it will,” she said, and she licked her dry lips.

“This is madness.”

“No,” she said. “This is all I can do. I have no choice. My body feels broken, but as sad as I am, my mind is strong.”

“You have to talk to your family.”

She blinked and inhaled and licked her dry lips again. “They don’t understand.”

“
I
don’t understand.”

She attempted to grip his hand with hers. “I can’t be expected to go on.”

“You’ll get help now,” he said.

She nodded, but she knew that it was too late, that nothing and no one could help her now.

“Whatever the doctor says, you’ll do,” he said.

She blinked.

“You’ll be okay,” he said, “and we will find her.”

Breda blinked again because she had said all that she was going to say.

Leslie woke up in her ward. It took awhile for her to come around, and when she did, the effects of morphine made the back of her head feel like it was being swallowed by her bed. She thought about attempting to sit up, but she couldn’t even garner the strength to move her head so that she could look down at herself. Through the narcotic-induced mist she could feel pain, but not enough to call for someone or seek attention. Her head and heart were both heavy, her insides desecrated, her breasts gone, and she didn’t realize it but her finger was pressing down on a button administering morphine and her bed was quickly beginning to feel like a tomb and she heard herself screaming.

Ah for fuck’s sake, is this how I’m going to die?

The nurse appeared quickly and removed Leslie’s finger from the button and attempted to settle her. “Just relax, everything went well, you’re in good hands,” she said.

“The fucking bed is swallowing me!” Leslie screamed.

“The bed is not swallowing you.”

“Save me, you fuckfaced motherfucking fucker!” Leslie said, and the woman in the bed opposite laughed.

“Okay, everything’s fine, I’ve got you,” the nurse said calmly.

“I am dying. I’ve been dying all my fucking life!”

“You’re not dying.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a frog?”

The woman in the bed opposite put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

“It’s the meds talking,” the nurse said to the woman, who was clearly enjoying the meds talking and was looking forward to hearing more from them.

“Nurse?”

“Yes, Leslie.”

“I’ve gone blind.”

“No, love, you’ve just closed your eyes.”

Leslie fell into a deep sleep after that and didn’t wake up for twelve hours. When she did wake, she had absolutely no memory of the incident ever having taken place.

Jim was the first person she remembered who visited. He was reading a newspaper when she woke.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“President Sarkozy has decided to postpone a trip to Ireland to discuss the EU Lisbon Treaty.”

“Oh,” she said, “I forgot to vote.”

“Well, you had other things on your mind.”

“Yeah,” she said, and suddenly she felt like crying. Her face still felt a little numb, so she didn’t realize that she actually was.

“You’re going to be all over the place,” he said. “It’s perfectly normal.”

“Nothing about this is normal,” she said.

“In a few weeks you’re going to feel so much better.”

“But I’m going to look so much worse.”

“No,” he said, “you’re going to look like a new woman, a woman with a massive weight taken off her shoulders.”

“I’ll have no breasts,” she said. “I haven’t even looked yet. I’m too scared.”

“Take your time, allow yourself to heal, be kind to yourself, and then when the time comes if you’re not happy, you can get implants.”

“Like Pamela Anderson.”

“No. Most definitely not like Pamela Anderson.”

Leslie would have laughed, but she was too sore. The drains coming out of her stomach and chest had blood and pus spewing into bottles, and it was as uncomfortable as it was unsightly. When the nurse fixed Leslie’s bedsheets, the sheet covering a bottle fell away, revealing its horrible contents to Jim, but if he saw it, it certainly didn’t faze him. Of course he had witnessed that and more, even if it had been more than ten years before.

After he left, Leslie was sick in a bowl for an hour, every part of her ached, and with every retch her newly stitched skin pulled and burned. When the woman with the cart asked her if she wanted some toast, Leslie pointed to the bowl before leaning in for another spew.

“Say no more, my dear,” the woman said. “I’ll catch you on the way back.”

Elle waited until the third day before visiting her friend. She did this because when she checked Google, a website told her that day two following an operation was the worst day, and she didn’t want to make Leslie’s life harder than it already was. She arrived with grapes, magazines, and a book about self-discovery. She was on her own because Jane had to meet their accountant. She was nervous and wasn’t sure about what she should say, and for once she was quiet.

“Are you all right?” Leslie asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Yes.” Leslie smiled.

“I didn’t sleep,” Elle admitted. “I couldn’t make my mind stop.”

“I’ve been there.”

“Sometimes it feels like my mind is on a treadmill and I’m trying to reach the Stop button but I can’t and with every second that passes I feel like I’m about to fall off.”

“What kind of things do you think about?” Leslie asked, glad that they weren’t talking about the operation.