Belinda McKeon - Tender

Was it her business?

Because it was only a lark.

Only a plunge.

Catherine and James. Catherine and James.

And the things they could do.

What are you up to these days, Citóg? I never see you anymore.”

“Busy.”

* * *

Nothing that was not him was anything that she could see.

* * *

And James’s gaze in the street now: not something of which Catherine could afford to allow herself to be aware.

Still walking the streets as they were, the taunting bastards; still everywhere, with their untouchable, insolently beautiful stares—

(This was how she thought of them now: as stares, not as the stared-at. Dublin, for her now: the house of the stare.)

And so if, beside her, he saw someone — if, beside her, he sighed or muttered in that way — well, Catherine simply had not heard. Catherine simply had not noticed it, that pulse of pain and longing, that shrapnel through skin of what could not be had—

* * *

From “Tulips”: I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

* * *

Amy, wanting to know if she should add Catherine’s name to the pot one night for dinner.

“No. I’ll be at James’s. I’ll probably crash on his couch.”

And Amy nodding, saying nothing. Amy, who had heard Catherine and James, the noise of them, through her own bedroom wall.

You know, I was always close to Amy, he had said to her, that day by the canal. You know that.

* * *

(That day now so long, long ago.)

* * *

Because nobody knew.

Amy, and that dividing wall just chipboard, really — and nobody knew.

Lorraine walking in on the two of them in the sitting room, one night — and nobody knew.

Zoe, and whatever it was that Zoe saw, or Zoe intuited — and nobody knew.

Because silence. Because pretending.

Because these were the things they all knew, so well, how to do.

* * *

Zoe:

Dear Citstytis,

You are not at your desk, a.k.a. Dead Poets Society, and you are not having coffee anywhere that I can see. Hopes of shaggage with Young Emmet also dashed, as I see him strutting in his peacock fashion around the lawn. Cartier-Bresson also nowhere in evidence, so I assume you are with him, discussing Important Art Matters, a.k.a. preying on v.v. pretty boys.

Aidan, Lisa, Nordie Liam and I are going to the Alpha at 16:00 hours for fried animal pieces and many pots of tea. Please come if you get this! Bring Cartier-B! Fried animal pieces! Pots of tea!

Yours in perpetuity,

Z

* * *

Zoe, growing friendly, now, with PhotoSoc Lisa and with Nordie Liam, as she called them, always off for coffee or lunch or pints.

“You can’t call him Nordie Liam,” Catherine told her, but Zoe just laughed.

“He doesn’t mind. He’s a sweetheart. I’m trying to get him and Lisa together. They’d be so cute, the pair of them.”

And what would that be like? To be so cute, the pair of you?

* * *

Everything was jealousy. Everything was longing for a life that she could not have. It was as though she had taken his pain, the pain he had talked to her about, and inverted it.

No. It was as though she had been jealous, even, of his pain. That was what it was.

That was how far it had gone with her.

* * *

Aidan, one day on the ramp pretending to eye them suspiciously as they passed, Catherine’s arm locked in James’s:

“Where are you two sneaking off to?”

And Aidan, it struck her as James peeled away from her, going over to him for a brief, laughing exchange about something — she did not even pay attention to what — Aidan — was Aidan, after all, to be trusted, really?

And probably not.

Because he was older, Aidan; he was worldly, wasn’t he? He had told her, hadn’t he, that night that she had been with him, during the course of their long, snuggled-up conversation (how far away that conversation seemed now, how unbelievable) that he had done everything there was to do? Catherine had assumed that he was talking about travel, about the fact that he had been to South America, and Australia, and the fact that he had lived in London for years — but no, probably, it had been sex, actually, that he had been talking about that night — probably it had been his way of letting her know that he had been with not just women but also men—

And James had said he was sexy, Aidan. James had said it to her, that first day she had introduced them; James had mouthed it to her, making her cringe with his obviousness, with the way that Aidan could so easily see him—

And, so, had that been James’s intention, then, that day?

And, so, was there any way she could trust them, the two of them in such close, dangerous proximity?

* * *

“We have to go,” she said to Aidan, and she pulled James, still laughing, away.

* * *

And:

“James, baby!” said PhotoSoc Lisa, greeting him one day, her arms thrown open at the sight of him.

Catherine’s eyes became, suddenly, blades. Rounding on her, staring at her; unblinking. Lisa, maybe noticing; seeming to stumble in confusion a moment, before James hugged her, seeming to stagger a little with the worry that she had done something wrong—

Which she had. Which she very much had.

James, baby! Catherine mimicked in her head, angrily, all night. James, baby!

Because how could Lisa be trusted either?

No.

Nor woman neither.

Though by your smiling—

* * *

(Everyone could fuck off with their smiling.)

* * *

Emmet, one day up in the publications office, gave her a heart.

Joke heart. A discarded, forgotten-about charity heart. One of those lapel pins sold on the street to make money for the Irish Heart Association; he had found it, probably, in a pen tray or a drawer. Red velveteen blob of it scuffed now, stenciled, smiling face faded.

All of his polished, grinning irony, as he handed it to her.

All of hers, taking it as casually as though it was a memo or a fax.

She put it in the drawer of her bedside table.

(She said nothing about this to Zoe.)

(Nothing about this to James.)

* * *

A cigarette, tipping against the darkness. The sound of his breath, languid and weighed. His skin pressed to hers, damp, as they fell asleep together.

* * *

And in the morning, they made a joke of it, because that was the only way, Catherine knew, to make sure that it could happen again.

* * *

(Thinking of him all day. Thinking, What now? Thinking, When next? )

* * *

Thinking, Love, love —

* * *

Dreaming that she could make them a cave.

* * *

She was a miner. The light burning blue.

* * *

She wrote: Plummet. Breakage. Loss.

* * *

She wrote: He must have been a beautiful boy.

* * *

Down home one weekend, and so tempted to spill everything to Ellen.

But no.

(And how was it even possible, to miss a sister you already had?)

Or her mother’s sigh; her mother’s sigh that said, I know damn well you’re up to something, but I don’t know what. Sensing something, like a cat hunting, moving from garden into field. Blind hedge, and she could not see beyond it, but she had the scent. She had the sigh.

But the sigh could not get at Catherine now.

“No news,” was all she said.

Two or three weeks in, there came the night when James talked, in her bed, of a boy.

Of a particular boy — Zoe’s new boyfriend, Lucien — and of how very nice he must be to fuck.

Catherine staring at the ceiling. Feeling as though her heart was dropping down a well.