Page 95 of People In Love
His tears, now. Nora hears them, through her own.
Bren –
But then he’s throwing the bloodied towel on the floor andbrushing past her into the hall, out the porch doors. Footsteps receding. Wind chimes colliding and the Bruce Springsteen song still playing from the speakers, from the funeral, from all the good times in Jon’s life, comin’ to an end.
The three women are left stunned and staring. And Nora looks at the two mothers, not knowing what to do, and can think only: what would Robin do, here.
I’ll go, she says. And Josie nods, and Freya does, too, and Nora doesn’t know what she’ll do or say but she knows she has to do it, as she crunches down the driveway after his red hair and black shirt and fast-moving feet, and it is him she follows past the parked cars, past the spot where his dad’s heart gave out, him she grabs by the sleeve because in this moment he needs her, and she cannot feel what is happening, elsewhere, even though something is, the one thing you aren’t worried about is the one thing that matters most and this will haunt her, for the rest of her days, but for now she is catching up to Bren and she is saying his name, and he’s saying no, he is saying no no no.
It’s okay, she says, shushing him; it’s okay.
And she does all she can think to and folds herself around him. She thinks he might pull away but instead he puts his head on her shoulder and it feels heavy and fragile, like a paperweight, and she cradles it in her hands.
They cling to each other on the green, like that. Like yin and yang. And it is so tragic and so sad and so late for this, and it is one of those moments in life that feels like it’s not actually happening and yet here they are, here is the grief she knew would come for him, in the end; and here she is, holding him the way she knew she would want to, when it did.
EIGHTEEN
The gannets are the ones you want to watch, Josie told you, over the tomato salad and the bread, after the argument that wasn’t quite an argument that felt too bright, like the sunlight through the cloud, neon-white, hard to look at.
The way they dive like silver arrows into the water, she said. It’s mesmerising.
She looked like she enjoyed saying that word. Used her hands, to show the movement. You’d not brought your camera to the Easter lunch, but you’d wished you had, in that moment.
I’ve seen them, once, in real life, Josie said.
In real life, you repeated, which was a gentle joke she did not get, because when else is life not real?
And you are thinking about this on the train home, after the bus, which was a blur, a hot shady discoloured blur before the railway station, a non-place, a term you’d discussed with Nora on your fifth or sixth date but was ita date when you were in each other’s pockets, by then, sharing a toothbrush holder, a bedside water glass, spending hours in bed when you should’ve been in the studio or the darkroom or the lectures you missed by accident because you lose all sense of time and duty and daylight when you are with her, when you were with her, which you’re not any more, you don’t think.
A non-place. You remember the term, vaguely, from an art seminar, as you get off the carriage. Somewhere that is not your own, shared by others before and after you, rush of the trains and white noise and thunder of metal on tracks. Generic places like bus depots and hospital rooms and airports which remain faceless, alienating, no matter who you are, what you’ve done,what have you done, you wonder, as you move through the motions, the memories, streets and alleyways and dead ends with graffiti on the pavement until you’re home with the wrong keys in your hands
you ring Goose
you tell him
something’s not
NINETEEN
They sit on the swings before the rain comes in. It is forecast for later that evening, but for now it is fresh and bright, their shoes scuffing on the asphalt. Nora in sandals, Bren in the only shoes that aren’t his hiking boots: approach shoes, he’d called them. And this, she thinks, is what they’ve been approaching this whole time.
I don’t want to do it, Bren says.
She stays quiet, at first, a swallow flying over their heads. Then she tells him he doesn’t have to. But you think I should? he asks her.
I think it should have been talked about, first, rather than thrust upon you like that, she says. I also think that conversation should stay private, between you and your mum. Or a therapist, even. When you’re ready.
She thinks of Freya, muscling in on this whole thing. The shame of it, the gall. And she thinks of herself, too, resenting Jon. Half hating him. Unable to lay him to rest, properly, because he is not the man she had known.
Well I’m not ready, Bren says. And it’s pathetic.
It’s not, Nora says.
He leans back on the swing like he used to, so far his head nearly touches the ground. You can reallyseethe world is a sphere, Nora, he told her once, if you do this, tip way backuntil you can’t see anything else, no houses or pylons or pavements, just the sky, do you see? And Nora had thought, not for the first time, that he was a poet, inside; or at least might be, one day. If he could only understand what he felt, and not just say what he saw.
I can’t believe he died, he says, and his voice is so hoarse, so barely there, it could be the wind.
I know, she says, and he rights himself again and says he knows she knows, that she was there, that she went to the funeral, helped with the aftermath he couldn’t face and still doesn’t want to because it fucking hurts, still, after all this time, nothing helps; why does it still fuckinghurt.
