Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

Gabe hovered awkwardly by the dining-room door in the long heavy silence that followed.

‘Who have you brought with you, Lou?’ his brother Quentin interrupted, holding out his hand and moving towards Gabe. ‘Sorry, we weren’t introduced. I’m his brother, Quentin, and this is my wife, Alexandra.’

Lou wolf-whistled, then laughed.

‘Hello, I’m Gabe.’ Gabe shook Quentin’s hand and entered the dining room. He made his way around the table, shaking hands with all the family.

‘Lou,’ Ruth said quietly, ‘perhaps you should have some water or coffee, I’m about to make some coffee.’

Lou sighed loudly. ‘Am I an embarrassment, Ruth, am I?’ he snapped. ‘You told me to come home. I’m home!’

There was a silence around the table as people awkwardly tried to avoid each other’s gazes. Lou’s father looked at him angrily, the colour rising in his face, his lips trembling slightly as though the words were rushing out of them yet weren’t making any sound.

Gabe continued to make his way around the table.

‘Hello, Ruth, I’m very pleased to finally meet you.’

She would barely look him in the eye as she limply took his hand.

‘Hi,’ she said quietly. ‘Please excuse me while I just take all this away.’ She stood up from the table and began carrying the leftover cheese plates and coffee cups into the kitchen.

‘I’ll help you,’ Gabe offered.

‘No, no, please, sit down.’ She rushed into the kitchen with a load in her arms.

Gabe disobeyed and followed her anyway. She was leaning against the counter where she had placed the crockery, her back to him. Her head was down, her shoulders hunched, all life and soul of the woman gone at that very moment. He made a noise placing the plates beside the sink so that she knew he was there.

She jumped now, alert to his presence, composed herself, life and soul returning from their time-out, and she turned around to face him.

‘Gabe,’ she smiled tightly, ‘I told you not to bother.’

‘I wanted to help,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry about Lou. I wasn’t out with him tonight.’

‘No?’ She folded her arms and looked embarrassed for not knowing.

‘No. I work with him at the office. I was there late when he got back from the … well, from his coffee meeting.’

‘When he got back to the office? Why would he …’ She looked at him with confusion and then, ever so slowly, a shadow fell across her face as realisation dawned. ‘Oh, I see. He was trying to drive home.’

It wasn’t a question, more a thought aloud, and so Gabe didn’t respond, but she softened towards him.

‘Right. Well, thank you for bringing him home safely, Gabe. I’m sorry I was rude to you but I’m just, you know …’ The emotion entered her voice and she stopped talking and instead busied herself scraping food from the plates into the bin.

‘I know. You don’t have to explain.’

From the dining room they heard Lou let out a ‘Whoa’ and then there was the sound of a glass smashing, and his laughter again.

She stopped scraping the plates and closed her eyes, sighing.

‘Lou’s a good man, you know,’ Gabe said softly.

‘Thank you, Gabe. Believe it or not, that is exactly what I need to hear right now, but I was rather hoping it wouldn’t come from one of his work buddies. I’d like for his mother to be able to say it,’ she looked up at him, eyes glassy, ‘or his father, or it would be nice to hear it from his daughter. But no, at work, Lou is the man.’ She scraped the plates angrily.

‘I’m not a work buddy, believe me. Lou can’t stand me.’

She looked at him curiously.

‘He got me a job yesterday. I used to sit outside his building every morning, and yesterday, totally out of the blue, he stopped and gave me a coffee and offered me a job.’

‘He mentioned something like that last night.’ Ruth searched her brain. ‘Lou really did that?’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘No, I’m not. Well, I am. I mean … what job did he give you?’

‘A job in the mailroom.’

‘How does that help him out?’ she frowned.

Gabe laughed. ‘You think he did it for his own good?’

‘Oh, that’s a terrible thing for me to say.’ She bit her lip to hide her smile. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. I know Lou is a good man, but lately he’s just been very … busy. Or more distracted ; there’s nothing wrong with being busy, as long as you’re not distracted.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘But he’s not all here. It’s like he’s in two places at once. His body with us, his mind constantly elsewhere. The decisions he makes lately are all to do with work, how to help his work, how to get him from one meeting to the other meeting in the quickest time possible, yada, yada, yada … so him offering you the job, I just thought that … God, listen to me.’ She composed herself. ‘You obviously brought out the good side in him, Gabe.’

‘He’s a good man,’ Gabe repeated.

Ruth didn’t answer, but it was almost as though Gabe read her mind when he said, ‘But you want him to become a better one, don’t you?’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘Don’t worry.’ He placed his hand over hers and it was immediately comforting. ‘He will be.’

When Ruth told her sister the next day about the exchange, and her sister ruffled her nose thinking it all very weird and suspicious as she did most things in life, Ruth only then wondered why on earth she hadn’t questioned Gabe, why she hadn’t felt it all so very odd at that moment. But it was the moments that counted, being in the moment, and in that moment she hadn’t felt compelled to ask. She believed him, or at least she had wanted to believe him. A kind man had told her that her husband would be a better man. What good was an afterthought?

16. The Wake-Up Call

Lou awoke the morning after to a woodpecker sitting on his head and hammering away consistently with great gregariousness at the top of his skull. The pain worked its way from his frontal lobe, through both his temples, and down to the base of his head. Somewhere outside, a car horn beeped, ridiculous for this hour, and an engine was running. He closed his eyes again and tried to disappear into the world of sleep, but responsibilities, the woodpecker, and what sounded like the front door slamming, wouldn’t allow him safe haven in his sweet dreams.

His mouth was so dry, he found himself smacking his gums together and thrashing his tongue around in order to gather the smallest amount of moisture to give him the honour of avoiding the loathful task of dry-retching. And then the saliva came, and he found himself in that awful place – between his bed and the toilet bowl – where his body temperature went up, his mind dizzied and the moisture came to his mouth in waves. He kicked off his bedclothes, ran for the toilet and fell to his knees in a heavy, heaving, worshipping of the toilet bowl. It was only when he no longer had any energy, or anything left inside his stomach, for that matter, that he sat on the heated tiles in physical and mental exhaustion, and noticed that the skylight was bright. Unlike the darkness of his usual morning rises at this time of the year, the sky was a bright blue. And then panic overcame him, far worse than the dash he’d just encountered, but more like the panic that a child would experience on learning they’re late for school.

Lou dragged himself up from the floor, and returned to the bedroom with the desire to grab the alarm clock and strangle the nine a.m. that flashed boldly in red. They’d all slept it out. They’d missed their wake-up call. Only they hadn’t, because Ruth wasn’t in bed, and it was only then he noticed the smell of a fry drifting upstairs, almost mockingly doing the can-can under his nose. He heard the clattering and clinking of cups and saucers. A baby’s babbles. Morning sounds. Long, lazy sounds that he shouldn’t be hearing. He should be hearing the hum of the fax machine and photocopier, the noise of the elevator as it moved up and down the shaft and every now and then pinged as though the people inside had been cooked. He should be hearing Alison’s acrylic nails on the keyboard. He should be hearing the squeaking of the mail cart as Gabe made his way down the hallways …