The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes (37 page)

‘I understand.’

‘It was selfish and I’m sorry.’

‘You were doing your best for Rabbit.’

‘But she knew better than me. She always did.’

‘Not about everything, Marjorie,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. She slipped hers around his waist and they walked on comfortably.

Davey and Marjorie were never destined to be a couple – they weren’t even the very best of friends – but their lives had been embroidered together through the important moments they had shared in life. Davey owed Marjorie a lot. She had been the one to pull him out of the depression that had set in after the band had broken up. He had felt abandoned and directionless.

Johnny was battling for his life and the only person he’d have near him in the early days was Rabbit.

Francie had managed to dump Sheila B, and after one incident, in which she’d tried to run him down in a supermarket car park, she’d finally let him go. She’d disappeared into her own madness, and he had met Sarah, who turned out to be the love of his life. The band splitting up had made an adult of Francie: he loved music but he loved life more and he was content to let the past go. Within a month of the split, the factory sent him on a management course. Between that and moving into Sarah’s flat in town, he hadn’t really been around.

Jay had met a girl too. She was a singer in a band that had supported Kitchen Sink a few times. As soon as he’d broken the news that the band was gone, she’d fired her guitar player and he was installed. It wasn’t his idea and he wasn’t too sure, but the sex was good, they had their own bus and he could live the rock-and-roll lifestyle – if only for a year. Then their relationship had imploded and, coincidentally, she’d tried to run him over in a Navan car park.

Kev dumped the French girlfriend but stayed in Paris to study sculpture; much to everyone’s surprise, he had a gift for it.

Davey was suddenly and catastrophically alone so he drank on his own down in the local. It was there that he bumped into Marjorie. She’d just turned eighteen and offered to buy him a drink now that she could do legally. He’d already had a few in him. He’d agreed and she’d sat down next to him at the bar.

‘Where’s Rabbit?’ he’d asked.

‘Johnny needed her.’

‘When did my friend become my little sister’s friend?’

‘When he robbed her from me.’

She bought shots. They clinked their glasses and drank.

He bought shots. They clinked their glasses and drank.

She bought shots. They clinked their glasses and drank.

And so it went on, until they needed to hold onto one another to walk out of the pub. Halfway down the street Marjorie stopped.

‘Do you want to puke?’ he asked her.

‘No. You?’

‘No.’

‘Why are we stopping, then?’

‘I want to ask you something.’

‘Do it.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

That was when Davey Hayes burst into tears in the middle of the street. A few lads across the road jeered at him but he didn’t notice.

‘I miss him, Marjorie. I miss the lads, I miss the music, I miss fucking hoping.’

Marjorie had held him and told him that everything would work out.

‘For who? Not for Johnny, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘It’s just so fucked up.’

She didn’t argue, because it was. Davey’s tears sobered them both enough to get chips. After they’d eaten them and were halfway home, they passed the park. The gate was mysteriously open. Davey couldn’t remember which of them suggested going inside, but he remembered what had happened next very well. They kissed and pulled at one another’s clothes and he kept asking her if it was all right and she kept slapping him and telling him to stop asking. She lay on the grass and he lay on top of her and it was all so quick. Her jeans were around her ankles, his were around his knees, and at one point she screamed and pinched him.

‘Ow! What’s that for?’

‘It hurt.’

‘Shall I stop?’

‘No, don’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

She hit him again.

‘Stop hitting.’

‘Well, stop stopping.’

When they had finished, and their trousers were back around their waists, he realized she had been a virgin and was contrite. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She was beaming, thrilled to have joined the ranks of the sexually active. ‘What for? That was great.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. Couldn’t be happier.’

‘It wasn’t very memorable.’

‘Oh, trust me, it was memorable.’ She had walked home in a pair of white jeans stained with blood and grass, and he thought it remarkable that she didn’t seem to give a shit.

After that they had been together a few more times, but theirs turned out to be an easy friendship rather than a great love story. It was Marjorie who had encouraged him to go to America two years later, after Johnny had died. She’d set him up with her uncle, who ran a music bar in New York, and changed the course of Davey’s life. When he had returned home for three weeks, two years ago, they had engaged in a short-lived but passionate affair and he had changed the course of hers. They were both grown-up, he was lonely and she was unhappy. It was highly charged, exciting, but the passion that had burned in darkness was extinguished as soon as it was brought to light.

Davey had always cared for Marjorie, possibly more than she knew. They were on their second circuit of the grounds when he broached the subject of their past. ‘Do you think if things were different we’d have ended up together?’ he asked.

‘No.’ She said it in a good-humoured way but it was still a very definite no.

‘Ah, come on, at least pretend to think about it.’

‘No.’ She chuckled at such a silly notion.

‘We had some good times all the same.’

‘We did.’

‘We’re always going to be in one another’s lives, you know.’

‘Are we, Davey?’ she asked, and that was when she cracked.

They stopped walking. He faced her and pulled her to him. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I feel like I’m losing you all,’ she said.

He drew back to look her in the eye. ‘You will not lose us. You are family, Marjorie, just like Francie, Jay and even Kev. It’s just the way it is.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and he kissed her. She kissed him back – and before he knew it they were leaning against a tree and going at it like two teenagers. It was getting a little hot, heavy and unseemly for two grown adults, even if the grounds were empty.

Marjorie pulled away. ‘What are we doing, Davey?’

He sighed. ‘Being stupid.’

They moved slightly apart. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘We should go back inside.’

There, they learned that Rabbit had woken for a minute or two. Marjorie was gutted. ‘I missed her.’

‘You’ll be here the next time,’ he said but, looking at his sister, he wasn’t sure that she would wake up again.
Come on, Rabbit, let us see you, please, one last time.

‘Rabbit, I’m so sorry, but he doesn’t want to see you.’ Mrs Faye was holding her front door close to her chest, her full weight against it. Rabbit couldn’t have got past her even if she’d made a run at it.

‘Wha’? Why?’

‘He’s not well enough.’

‘But I help him.’

‘Not any more, love. He wants you to get on with your life.’

‘No. He wouldn’t do that to me, not like this.’

‘He thinks it’s the only way. You know he’s not cruel, you know it’s hard on him, but he’s right. He’s getting sicker, love, and you have your whole life ahead of you.’

‘No, not acceptable,’ Rabbit said, and she tried to push through, but Mrs Faye held firm. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said, and closed the door.

The next day Rabbit returned. Mrs Faye opened the door enough to talk to her through a small slit.

‘Please.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Just five minutes.’

‘No.’

‘OK, two minutes.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Rabbit said.

‘Go home, Rabbit.’

On the third day, when Rabbit knocked, Mrs Faye didn’t open the door. Instead she pulled the curtain away from the glass and shook her head.

‘I’m not going away,’ Rabbit said. She stood back in the garden and shouted to the upstairs bedroom window. ‘Do you hear me, Johnny? You can’t do this. It’s not fair. I’m not going away.’

The fourth day she knocked but Mrs Faye didn’t answer. Her car was there and Johnny’s district nurse’s car was outside, which meant he was there.

‘I’m here. I’m sitting on your wall,’ she shouted up to the window.

Maura Wallace, the Fayes’ next-door neighbour on the right, stepped out of her house. ‘Still no joy, love?’

‘No.’

‘Men are bastards.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘It looks like that to me.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re wrong.’

‘He’s sick, I get it, but he’s still no right to treat you like this.’

‘Mrs Wallace, you don’t know me.’

‘Of course I do. You’re the slip of a thing who’s been following Johnny Faye around since you were in bunches.’

‘I just want to talk to him. Why won’t he talk to me?’

Mrs Wallace sat on the wall beside Rabbit. ‘Because he’s afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Not being able to say no and dragging you down that dark path with him.’

‘Did he ask you to call him a bastard?’

‘Yeah, but I knew it wouldn’t work.’

‘Jesus. Do you think I’m that stupid, Johnny Faye?’ she shouted.

‘He’s doing his best for you, love. Why can’t you accept it?’

‘Because it’s not just his choice.’

‘It is.’ She placed a hand on Rabbit’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to know when to let go.’

She left Rabbit alone on the wall. ‘I’m not letting go, Johnny. I am not letting go,’ she yelled up at the window, then walked away.

On the fifth day she knocked and, to her surprise, Mrs Faye answered. She opened the door wide and asked Rabbit in. Rabbit ran straight up the stairs and into Johnny’s room. It was empty. The kettle was on when she reached the kitchen.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone, Rabbit.’

‘Gone where?’

‘A respite place, somewhere they can help him.’

‘Where?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

‘So I’ll wait. He won’t be there for ever.’

Mrs Faye took an envelope out of her handbag and handed it to her.

‘What’s this?’

‘Tickets for America.’

‘You’re messing,’ Rabbit said, opening it.

‘And there’s a note too.’

‘America?’

‘Johnny had some money put away. Davey mentioned your friend Marjorie was going for the summer. He knows you got that J1 visa.’

‘Marjorie applied with me ma. I didn’t even know about it,’ Rabbit said.

‘So go.’

‘No way.’

‘He wants you to go, Rabbit.’

Rabbit looked at the plane ticket to America, then slumped into a chair and cried. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes, love, I’m afraid it is,’ Mrs Faye said.

‘Will he let me write to him?’

‘I’m sure he’d love that.’

Rabbit walked home with the ticket and the note in her pocket. When she got to her wall she sat on it and opened the letter.

Dear Rabbit
,

My stupid hands are starting to give up on me. Ma is writing this letter so forgive her handwriting and forgive me if I don’t sound like myself. I wanted to tell you that life is a series of phases, at least that’s how it appears to me. I remember you with your thick glasses and your bunches, the gawky girl who always said it like it was and then second-guessed herself. I remember you following me around and looking at me as if I was some kind of god. That kid was so sweet and kind and cool. Then came phase two and all of a sudden you were a teenager, strident like your ma, decisive under pressure, like your da, and with Davey’s ear for music. You were the heart of Kitchen Sink back then. You didn’t know it, of course. You’ve always underestimated yourself. Phase three, you grew up and I got sick, and there was this brief shining moment where you were old enough and I was still well enough to love you. I know you well enough to know that you’ll never let go. I don’t want you to, but let me go now and hold me in your mind’s eye like you said you would that night in the car. I’ll wait for you to get past the doorman, and in the meantime, go to America, Rabbit.

My love always,

Johnny X

Molly joined her on the wall. ‘Mrs Faye was just on the phone.’

Rabbit handed her the letter and the ticket.

‘I think it’s for the best, Rabbit,’ Molly said.

‘It looks like I don’t have a choice, Ma.’

‘Nobody does when it really matters. It’s all an illusion, love.’ Molly put her arm around her daughter’s waist and squeezed it. ‘We just do the best we can, and that’s all Johnny’s doing.’

‘What if I can’t let go, Ma?’

‘When the time is right, Rabbit Hayes, you’ll let go, and in the meantime, we’re all here for you, my love.’

Rabbit’s ma kissed her daughter’s cheek. ‘Now, come inside before I burn the shite out of your da’s steak.’

THE ROOM WAS
sometimes silent, sometimes alive with familiar voices, which came and went. Rabbit could hear the people coming and going.

Francie and Jay visited, and the usual chaos and fun ensued.

‘Jaysus, Mrs H, talk about stealing a girl’s thunder.’

‘What shite are you talking now, Francie?’

‘You and your dodgy ticker! Oh, you couldn’t give Rabbit the spotlight for five minutes,’ Jay said.

Ha-ha-ha.

‘I’ll burst the pair of you,’ Molly said, and Rabbit could hear the others laughing.

They talked about the old days and relived the good memories. ‘She was able for some amount of booze back then,’ Francie said.

‘I once won a tenner from some country gobshite. I bet him she could drink two Red Witches to his one,’ Jay said.

‘Excuse me, she was under age back then,’ Molly said.

‘Big mouth.’ That was Grace.

‘I’d forgotten that.’ Davey.

‘What’s a Red Witch?’ Juliet asked.

‘It’s the thing they had before Coca-Cola,’ Jay told her.