Belinda McKeon - Tender

(A tone which said, Take as much offense as you like. )

Yes, his mother had been praying for this. Praying for James to find himself a girl, a girl who would shake himself out of himself; who would bring him out of the terrible, hopeless place into which he had wandered. And his mother, because she had met Catherine the previous summer — no, no interruptions, really, this was worth hearing all the way through — his mother had had high hopes for Catherine, and his mother had made Catherine the forerunner. The forerunner . For what, did Catherine think? For everything that mattered. For the only things that mattered, obviously. For what was normal.

(That word spat, like a seed, onto the dash of the car.)

And so all day, James had faced questions about Catherine: about whether he had come back to Ireland because of Catherine, and about whether it was because of Catherine that he had not come home until now, and about whether he saw Catherine often in Dublin, and about whether he enjoyed her company, and about whether he had thoughts about her, or desires for her — yes, desires . Yes, desires; yes, she had used that fucking word. The sound of it, in his mother’s mouth. And, worse again, asking him if he wanted, in any part of himself, to lie with Catherine, and had he ever lain with her, and he would not lie to his mother about this now, would he? Would he? He would not lie to his mother, if there was any chance, if there was any way, because she had prayed so hard, she had prayed so constantly—

Because I’m your mother, Jem, and I’m the one knows what’s true of you, deep, deep down.

* * *

And Catherine hated herself, in that moment. For wanting to ask what she wanted to ask. For needing to. She tried to stop herself; she tried to bite it back, beat it back, this swelling in her: this awful, unforgivable surging of hope.

But she could not. She could not harangue herself out of hoping.

And so she looked at him. Her heart a frantic drum.

“And?” she said, her voice tripping, slipping on the word. “And? What did you say?”

* * *

(Hoping what, exactly? Hoping that his reply would have opened the way to something different? Hoping it would show that his eyes had been opened, somehow, to something new? )

* * *

She was an idiot. She was a child. His long silence, before speaking, told her everything she was.

His top lip curling.

“I said, ‘Mother, we’re not discussing this again.’ What do you think I was going to say to her? I said, ‘We’ve discussed this before, Mother, and nothing has changed; nothing has changed about me, and nothing is going to change.’”

Catherine, nodding, agreeing, with all of her might.

And James saying that he was leaving again in the morning. That he did not even know why he had come home at all.

“I’ll go with you,” Catherine said eagerly. Wanting to show her support. Wanting to show—

His laugh, high and angry.

“Oh, you don’t fucking say .”

* * *

Who has dismembered us?

SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES:

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LANGUAGE

Catherine Reilly, SF English (TSM)

Trinity Term, 1998

And still the heaven

Of final surfeit is just as far

From the door as ever.

(From “Blue Moles,” 1957)

* * *

Twenty-five pages of it, and writing it exhausted her. Almost twenty hours in the computer labs at the back of campus; she finished it with only minutes to go to the deadline.

Afterwards, all she wanted to do was find him. Was fuck him. Was sleep with him, sleep tucked and hidden in his arms.

His arms around her. His arms, making her feel she was home.

But no.

No more.

* * *

Songs that had the exact shape of your heartbreak: they were the songs you had to cross the room to turn off.

* * *

Because he was suddenly nowhere she could find him. Not in the darkroom when she expected him to be in the darkroom. Not in O’Brien’s when she expected him to be on a shift there. Not in Thomas Street: she called the number, she knocked on the door, but no, his landlady said, she had not seen him this morning / this afternoon / this evening, she had no idea when he would be home—

* * *

And the ball had been absolutely brilliant, Zoe said.

And Liam’s drinks party, before the ball, had been very interesting indeed.

* * *

“ Very interesting,” Zoe said.

* * *

And how had Catherine missed this? How had she not seen it, this danger right in front of her eyes?

Because she thought like James about these things now, was the answer.

Or rather, the way she thought that James thought.

Because she had looked at Liam all these weeks and seen — well, go on, be honest…

Nothing.

No threat.

Just an ordinary boy.

I’m not suggesting him because suddenly now I know another gay guy and so I automatically think he and James should be together. You’re being far too small-minded about this, Catherine.”

* * *

She should have seen this. She should have—

* * *

“Though now that you mention it, that is precisely what I think should happen.”

* * *

Panic hammering in Catherine’s chest all day now; by now, it was when her heart stopped racing that she noticed it at all.

* * *

Waking and saying to the morning, Please do not get any worse.

But you could not reason with a morning. A morning was not a thing that had to give anything beyond what it was.

* * *

Working only in the farthest, most hidden reaches of the library. Law. Philosophy. Theology. The places where she reckoned herself least likely to be found. By Zoe. By Conor. By anybody. The desks in these sections hemmed in, on all sides, by bookshelves, and nowhere near the windows, and so nowhere in sight of the summer as it descended now: smug, thinking itself so generous, shining down on all the happy bodies, all the happy smiles.

* * *

Thinking, Might not. Thinking, Need not.

Might not ever find out, that was.

Need not ever be told.

Or Liam told, come to think of it, about him. Because Zoe had not told him about James; Zoe, it turned out, on that score, was a lot more discreet than Catherine had ever been. Saying, We can let them work it out for themselves. We can help them — we can nudge them — after the exams are over, we can make it so that they’re both in the right, same place, at the right, same time—

(And Catherine would see it again in her mind’s eye, as clearly as though it was unfolding right here in the library before her: James’s smile meeting his smile. James’s eyes softening at what they saw in his. A greeting, shy, and a conversation, nervy, and a knowledge, an understanding, sparking at every atom of the air; and a suggestion, a conversation, an invitation — something casual, something light…)

(And what, though, was actually wrong with her? What kind of friend would ever try to block this for him? Would fantasize about how to stop this ever from being?)

(But those were questions for other people. Those were questions for people who lived in some other, simpler realm.)

* * *

And of course she should never have left her hiding place. Of course she should never have gone out of the library, that lunchtime, for food. Standing at the arts block railing, eating her sandwich, and keeping her eyes on the ground, and nearly there; just on the last bite of bread—

And then Liam. Of course.

Lifting his hand to her: a shy greeting. Smiling at her, striding over to her, calling out her name—