Notes from a Coma (11 page)

That old cliché, time passes so quickly. It was hard to believe two whole years had gone by since Owen’s death. One minute you’re standing over an open grave with a wreath in your hand, the next you’re two years older and walking into an anniversary mass.

Normally there wouldn’t be that many at morning mass in the middle of the week but people had remembered so there was about thirty or forty people in the church when we got there—a good crowd. JJ and I took our place near the back and just as we were sitting down Anthony came in and sat a few seats up from us. Owen’s mother and father were over on the left. When the priest came out he said a few words and then offered up the mass for the memory of Owen Lally. That’s when it happened. JJ told me when he heard those words—
the memory of Owen Lally
—it felt as if someone had reached in and pulled out his spine. The pain, he said, the sense of himself collapsing. It was the strangest thing, I actually felt him collapse beside me like some big stringed instrument coming undone. He leaned out over the seat in front of him, bracing himself with both hands, as pale as a sheet and breathing like he’d sprinted all the way from the house. He straightened up and pushed past me into the aisle.

Outside in the church grounds he lay over the wall and got sick, puking and puking and sobbing as he puked. I stood over him holding his shoulders, urging him to get it all up whatever it was. When he stopped puking he hunkered down beside the wall with his hand over his mouth. He was green in the face and shivering.

Old Jimmy McNeely came across to us. He put his hand on the wall.

“Is that lad all right, Soracha?”

“Jimmy. Yes, I think, just a bit off colour.”

JJ stood up and drew his sleeve across his forehead. “I’m freezing,” he said. “Hello, Jimmy.”

“How’re you feeling, JJ? You want to get that lad home to his bed, Soracha. I’ve seen ghosts with more colour than that.”

“You’re late, Jimmy; the priest is on the altar.”

Jimmy laughed. “It makes no odds at my age. Can you manage, Soracha?”

“Thanks, Jimmy, I’m going to take him home.”

I drove to our house and put him sitting at the table. JJ was still shivering in the heat of the kitchen and he needed both hands to bring the mug of tea to his mouth.

“You don’t look good.”

“I don’t feel good; can I use your bed?”

He slept about an hour and when I went in to see him he was sitting up pulling on his T-shirt. Some of the colour had returned to his face.

“Lie in for a while, I’m still tired.’
^*

He reached up and drew me down to his chest, put his arm around me and his hand up behind my head. That was always his way of holding me. It was a long time before he spoke.

“That man must be over eighty years old.”

“Who?”

“Jimmy, Jimmy McNeely. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. Eighty years old and he still cycles into town for his plug of tobacco and few pints.”

“He’s such a gentle soul. A pint of your finest red beer, Soracha, and a small Jameson. That’s what he says whenever he comes in. Sits at the end of the bar and when he starts singing ‘Paddies Green Shamrock Shore’ you know then he’s had enough.”

“He told me once that he’s cycled all the way to the moon and back. Forty years as a postman in this parish. Thirty-seven miles a day fifty weeks of the year. All the way to the moon and back as the crow flies he reckoned.”

He was quiet for a long while and then he turned on his back.

“I never knew he was dead, Sarah. A full two years and
I never knew. Can you believe that? How could I be so clueless, so stupid. If anyone had asked me I would have said yes, Owen is dead, my best friend, my brother, is dead and he’s never coming back, I know that. But I didn’t know it, Sarah, I didn’t
really
know. It was only when the priest said those words,
the memory of Owen Lally
, that’s when I knew.
The memory of Owen Lally
.”

“It’s passed so quickly.”

“I have this picture of him,” he said, “this image. It’s the same image that comes to me whenever I think of him but for the life of me I don’t know where I got it from. It’s a sunny morning, always Monday even though I don’t know how I know that either. Owen is outside Kelly’s shop with a bottle of Lucozade and a pint of milk in his hand. He’s wearing jeans and T-shirt, his working clothes, and he stops to take a swig out of the bottle. He puts the carton of milk on the window sill behind him and stands there swigging away, wincing and thumping his chest as he swallows. Then he screws the cap back on the bottle and walks up the street to where the David Brown is parked outside the Bunowen. He swings her out on to the street and takes off out the Westport road. I don’t know where I got that from, Sarah.
Owen must have done that a thousand times in his life but I can never remember seeing him do it. But it’s still the clearest memory I have of him, something I’ve never actually seen him do. How can that be?”

We had the house to ourselves that evening so we pulled the table into the middle of the back garden and made something to eat. JJ had come round to himself a bit by then. He was looking healthier and hungrier.

“Twelve bicycles, Jimmy said, that’s how many he got through on his journey to the moon.”

“I spoke to him outside the graveyard the day Owen was buried. He was so lonely I couldn’t believe it, an old man sobbing into a big white hanky like that. You’d think with all his years something like Owen’s death would be easier to take.”

JJ shook his head. “I think it only gets worse. When someone like Owen dies in a small place like this it’s not just death you’re talking about. This village didn’t just lose one of its sons, it lost a part of its future. Owen was the type of fella this village has hopes for, it saw its future in him. He was an only son, he was going to stay at home and run the farm, probably build a new house … Another couple of
years and his kids would be going to national school and Owen would be going to parent-teacher meetings. These are the things that ended in Owen’s death and that’s why an old man like Jimmy was crying. Owen’s death yes, but the future also. People round here had their fingers crossed for the likes of Owen, they had hopes and dreams for him even if they didn’t know they were hoping and dreaming. Someone like Owen is public property in a small place like this. You must feel that too, the way people look at us when we’re out together.”

“I know the way people look at us but I just thought it was young love and all that kind of thing.”

“It’s more than that, Sarah, people have their fingers crossed for us too. They remember what it was like here in the eighties and early nineties, how sons and daughters got scattered to the four winds and never came back. That still frightens them even if they don’t know it.”

“Have you ever thought of going back, JJ?”

I knew the moment I opened my mouth that I’d made a mistake. The look on his face, he honestly didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Back where?”

I paused and drew a long breath; I wanted to know. “You know, back to where you came from, back to see, to find out.”

This look of disbelief crossed his face. “Where has this come from all of a sudden?”

“I’m sorry I brought it up, I was just thinking out loud. But, you have to admit, it’s the most obvious thing in the world. All your questions and searching, all your anger, I
thought a time came for adopted kids when they needed to find out about their roots and their blood relatives. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

We had never broached this topic before and now that I had I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear him talk about it. He laid down his fork and shook his head.

“It’s a fair question, I’ve asked it myself more than once. But think about it, Sarah, what would I do if I went back? Look up registers and documentation? Find some poor woman in a tower block or rearing pigs on a small farm, a woman who has moved on with her life and who has probably forgotten all about me? Worse maybe, find out that she has died and that’s all there is to it. No, I’ve never wanted that. I’ve never felt my roots lie anywhere other than here. This is my home, Sarah, these are my roots, this is where I belong. I might have come into the world a thousand miles away but that was before I was born. I was born here, Sarah, and I belong here, I’ve never felt any other way.”

“But all those stories, all that talk about those other kids and the guilt, that’s all part of you.”

“It’s too late to go back, Sarah, that’s all in the past. Anything I found there would be out of place and out of time for me. All that anger and guilt, as you put it, has to find its answer here. This is my home, Sarah, don’t go making me homesick on top of everything else.”

“I just don’t understand. You’re now saying that all that happened before you were born and it has nothing to do with you. All you’re saying is that you were born to be angry and guilty and bitching and moaning at the world.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what I’m saying. Things happen in your life and they make you what you are, but coming into the world is not one of them. Neither is dying. They’re only bookends, they have nothing to do with your life. Think about Owen. Think about him. His death had nothing to do with his life.”

“Nothing except end it,” I said shortly. There was something here I couldn’t understand and it was making me angry.

“Apart from ending it, it had nothing to do with his life whatsoever. It had a far greater impact on mine and yours.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t mean it like that.”

“The worst sort of hair-splitting … I don’t understand.”

“What makes you think I do?” He picked up his fork. “Let’s drop it, Sarah. This food is going cold.”

Why JJ you ask? Let me say from the beginning that I am glad once and for all to go on record and clear up some of the misunderstandings which have arisen in the public mind over this project. A lot of confused nonsense has been written about it and I am glad of this chance to clarify things.
^*

Firstly, there was never any ulterior motive or agenda in choosing JJ. This idea that JJ’s background, his adopted status, presented some sort of an easy option is wholly untrue. His background was not an issue. His application came through the same channels as the others and it was subject to the same evaluative process. This project was open to everyone. It was written up in the national press, you could go into any government office or library in the country and pick up an application form and the literature. Failing that you could download everything from the Net. It was all out in the open
and that was the way JJ’s application came to this department. It arrived at department offices two days inside the deadline; you can see it here and you can see also the date of receipt stamped on it.

Secondly, JJ O’Malley is not a criminal. He has never served a prison sentence, never stood before the courts, nor are there any outstanding warrants against him. JJ O’Malley is an innocent man. That is important to stress because it is rumoured in some quarters that JJ is under suspicion for some crime or other. None of this is true so it is worth repeating: JJ O’Malley is an innocent man. No doubt confusion has arisen in some parts of the public mind because of the nature of the project. Yes, it is a penal experiment, it comes under the jurisdiction of the European Penal Commission and it is charged with research into the possibility of using deep coma as a future option in the EU prison system. And yes, it is true that four of the five participants on this experiment are serving sentences. JJ O’Malley, however, is not one of them. The reason for that is simple; it lies in the nature of the experiment itself. In any laboratory experiment of this kind conducted with multiple subjects over such a
timescale there has to be a control, a standard of comparison against which the re-actions of the others can be measured and compared. That is JJ’s function on this project. As an innocent man with no prison record he is the control, the baseline reference, the norm. This is standard experimental procedure and it was the responsibility of this department to find such a control. Hence JJ.

Once we drew up a shortlist of those candidates who had passed through the physical and psychological tests, the choice came down to an interview and the two-hundred-word essay each volunteer submitted with his application. Speaking for myself this was the most tedious part of the whole process. Almost without exception each essay exceeded the word limit. This in itself was sufficient grounds for binning them; however, we persevered. In general most of the essays were nothing more than a hotchpotch of clichés and second-hand platitudes—furthering the glory of science, to do something for my fellow man and so on and so forth. After reading a handful of them I felt as if I was judging a beauty contest. I half expected one of them to say they wanted to travel the world and work with handicapped kids. But JJ’s effort stood out. Two hundred words was the limit; he submitted twelve.
I want to take my mind off my mind for a while
. That’s all
he wrote,
I want to take my mind off my mind …
You can imagine after so many screeds of cliché and platitude how sudden and direct this was. It spoke to the heart of the issue and unlike the other scripts it spoke clearly and directly. It cut through all the dross and verbiage and spoke more in twelve words than the rest did in two hundred words or two hundred pages. The immediate impression it gave was of a clear mind which was direct, highly intelligent and with a merciful ability to spare words—a mind which did not beat around the bush. This was what it said to the panel, the five lay readers. Of course this gut reaction was not enough; we could not proceed on the basis of our layman’s analysis. To support the panel each application was handed over for evaluation to the forensic psychologist at Castlerea Prison, Jane Evers. Each script was handed over as a numbered file, with only relevant biographical details like age attached, but no names or any other details. The only stricture placed on Evers was that her report be written with as little technical jargon as possible—it had to be accessible to a general audience. This is her report: