Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘What sort of thing?’ I interjected warily.

‘Well that’s when we had the amazing conversation.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘It was just…’ she said dreamily, ‘it was so… have you ever had one of those conversations where you’re so connected with the other person that you stop being sure which of you is talking, because when they speak it’s like they’re articulating all these thoughts you’ve had that you’ve never been able to put into words before? He was telling me these things , like — like for instance about The Cherry Orchard when I didn’t get the part that time, Harry was saying you know Stanislavsky’s thing you can’t act Chekhov you have to live him, well that in Amaurot I’ve basically been living Chekhov for three years only I didn’t realize, and I was trying to be someone else when I was already exactly what they needed — God, he’s so insightful, it was like — like hearing my own heart speak up and tell me exactly what it was thinking, and you know it’s so weird because he and I have known each other for years, and now suddenly we find out we’re so alike , little things even like we both like Doris Day and Mozart and Hart Crane, and the way the wind when it blows through the pylons it sounds like it’s singing…’ She stopped and repeated to herself, as if in disbelief, ‘ God .’

‘At the same time, it’s not as if your heart’s been especially quiet up until now,’ I felt compelled to point out.

‘Yes, but Charles you know what it’s been like since college ended,’ she said, ‘stuck out here in the house, feeling like I wasn’t alive , even, like I was in this little closed-off area that was contiguous to life, and sort of along the same lines as life, but not actually life — and now suddenly in a single moment everything just opens up I mean it’s so exciting, don’t you think it’s exciting?’

‘What about Frank?’

‘What?’ she broke off mid-gush. ‘What do you mean, what about Frank?’

I hesitated. I didn’t know what I meant. It had just come out.

‘Since when do you care what happens to Frank?’ she said.

Suddenly I felt very confused. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just seems like an offhand way to treat somebody, that’s all.’

She groaned. ‘Charles, you’re not going to start , are you?’

‘I’m not starting anything,’ I said. ‘But a few weeks ago I seem to recall you being all set to move in with him . And while we’re on the subject, you don’t even like Doris Day.’

‘What?’

‘Doris Day, as long as I can remember any time “Que Sera Sera” has come on the radio you’ve made juvenile vomiting noises, and then last year when I was watching Pillow Talk you said she looked like an Aryan sex doll —’

‘Well, so what? What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Yes, but Mozart too, I distinctly remember you telling me that people who liked Mozart ought to be made to ride around in elevators for the rest of their lives. And those ghastly pylons, in fact all of those things you just said you have in common —’

‘People change , don’t they?’ she broke in. ‘Why are you being like this? Can’t you for once just be happy for me, instead of trying to pick holes? I mean, for months you did nothing but complain about Frank, and I know you’ve developed one of your stupid crushes on Mirela. So isn’t this what you wanted? I mean, what is it exactly that you want?’

Once again I found myself stuck for an answer. A Roman candle came to my rescue: it detonated right outside the window, throwing a hellish red up on the bedroom wall; the rumble took several seconds to die away. ‘What’s going on there anyway?’ her voice crackled from far away. ‘It sounds like the peasants are storming the battlements.’

‘They’ve stormed the battlements,’ I said glumly. ‘They’re having their wrap party.’

She laughed. ‘Poor old Charles,’ she said. ‘And here’s me shouting at you on top of everything. You know I promised myself that I wasn’t going to shout at you this time. I haven’t even asked you how you are. How are you?’

‘Well —’ I began.

‘Charles,’ her voice cut across me, ‘sorry to interrupt, but I have to go to a meeting now so before I forget the reason I wanted to see you — I wanted to tell you that I know everything’s going to work out, for both of us. I mean that’s what all this stuff I’ve been going on about has made me realize, that things do change, and… and just when it seems everything’s against you, that’s exactly when something’ll appear out of nowhere and suddenly it’ll all be different. I just wanted you to know.’

‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly.

‘And the other thing was, will you tell Frank we need a wheelchair for the play, if he comes across one?’

‘All right.’

‘I’d better go. Remember what I said.’

Deep in thought, I mooched back into the living room. Frank had emerged from the bathroom, and was silently watching television with Droyd. On the street, fireworks continued to crack like enemy artillery; huddled in the shifting light, the two of them had the look of soldiers caught in a foxhole. ‘Bel wants a wheelchair,’ I said.

‘Right,’ Frank said, without looking round.

I sat down on the sofa. I felt like I’d been walking through a hurricane. I wasn’t used to hearing Bel so happy . It made me nervous. It was like a car driving in a gear that it didn’t actually have. I wondered what that bounder had said to her, up on the roof.

‘ — forces allege that this is just one of dozens of similar sites scattered across the region,’ the television said, showing a soldier kicking dirt away from the ground to reveal what looked like a pile of washed-out rags.

She was right about one thing, though. For months I had prayed for the day when Frank would be given the heave-ho. There was nothing I wanted more than for her to be rid of him, his rusty white van, his mutilated gerunds. Now that the day had come, surely I was due a moment of jubilation or triumph or at least a cold sense of closure and the transience of all things. Yet as I sat on the dysmorphic sofa, waiting for the flush of victory to sweep through me, all there seemed to be was an annoying hollow feeling.

This was absurd! Hadn’t I been paying attention? Had my life really grown so complicated that its most fundamental notions of right and wrong no longer held? Good God, now that one tiny success had presented itself, was my own soul going to step in and turn it to defeat?

‘Good God,’ I uttered involuntarily.

‘What’s that, Charlie?’

‘Nothing, nothing, bit of a twinge is all,’ patting my bandages; he returned to the television and I to grapple with the mounting evidence of inner mutiny.

I tried to counter it. I pointed to the facts. I recalled his odious groping sessions with Bel. I remembered how he’d blown up my Folly. I took in the mournful cherubim on the shelves around me, the lonesome garden ornaments, the inconsolable tallboy, all torn from people’s houses. From the corner of my eye, I considered Frank himself, staring at the television, the can of Hobson’s propped on his exposed belly moving, with a noxious quiver, slowly up and down. None of it made any difference. The hollow feeling refused to go away.

The next days were very hard. I found myself in the grip of a crippling ennui . I was back at square one, but I couldn’t bring myself to resume my job hunt: it was all I could do to drag myself from the bedroom floor to the sofa. With every passing day my financial affairs grew more ruinous, and it became harder and harder even to conceive of how I might dig myself out of the hole I was in — which only compounded my ennui , and my disinclination to do anything about it. Instead I threw myself into my Gene Tierney project: I wrapped myself in her movies, lost myself in them, just as she had tried to lose herself years before. I watched each one avidly, meticulously cross-referencing it with her biography, charting the trajectory that emerged.