Sure enough Grief can’t see me for a couple of weeks, but she wants me to meet someone else in Castlebar while she is gone and she’ll be calling me with an appointment.
*
That extra appointment surged in me the need to inhabit the Blue House because I felt they were coming for me. Simply inhabit to not be here, to not listen to the details of the appointment. I had no strength for listening this day or any day. I wanted only to sit on the small Chinese footstool and talk to Jimmy. He never bothered me with these incessant questions. He only worried about me catching cold. I longed to be back talking to him no matter how uncomfortable the house.
*
There could be no telling me. He was dead and gone and I knew it. No matter what their mouths said back to me. I knew exactly where my son was. He was in the Blue House.
*
It was after that session with Grief that the woman came visiting me at the house. The Outreach Team woman she called herself. Nice enough she was, sporting an emphatic bobbed hairstyle, a shortish round woman. She was friendly and clapped her hands together a lot, as if to say come on now lads, sort it out. Except there were no lads anymore. She would be coming to see me once a week and I was to be going to another clinic every other week. She asked an awful lot of questions I became confused about what I was answering and answered yes to every single one so she would go home and leave me in peace.
This was a bad sign. When they’re in your house, they’re coming for ya, Bina said.
Bina instructed me firstly not to let her in, then said she’d better move in to be certain they did not take me away.
Be careful Phil, she said, they’re comin’ for ye.
Episode 15
When they came, I’d been expecting them. Knew how they’d look, knew I would know they’d come before they knocked on my door. And I did. The phone rang. Naturally the phone rang. The phone always rings. This is the problem with the phone. I nearly miss the days when we’d to go two and a half miles to the pub and wait out the evening for the pay phone to ring for us, for someone to call out is so and so here: a call from England. And everyone would push out of the way and let you through in a hurry, all hoping the voice would still be there on the line for ya. The miracle of telephony, none of us understanding how it all happened. Nor did we want to, we only wanted the voice to be there. And it was similar when they came to my door to tell me about Jimmy. I only hoped the miracle would be he was still there, but I had known for so much longer than they gave me credit for, that he was not.
*
It was in the hesitant way they unlatched the gate and closed it behind them as if they’d be staying awhile. I had the door open for I would not let them rest their knuckles on it and enjoy that pause before it pulled back. I unlatched it only because if they hadn’t delivered the news they’d retire to a local pub, and two and two would make eight and I wanted them gone from here with their blue and starched collars. Let it be in my ear canal rather than the entire village and mostly I wanted them gone.
— I know why you’ve come. I’ve been expecting you. Is it what I think it is? If it is just nod.
*
They commenced their emotionless speech delivered like they were brushing their teeth and avoiding the gums. She let them talk and at the end calmly nodded. She would not do what she’d heard the mother in Florida did, ran out to the garden threw herself to the ground, vomited, pulled at clumps of grass and roared. She would do none of it.
*
— Well you have him now, I said, you have taken all of him from me and now if you’ll excuse me I have chores to attend to.
I closed the door on them and returned to my kitchen table. I lifted my pen and wrote the number + 1 on the bottom of the table mat. Then I rose and put the flat of my right hand onto the hot range and wanted it left there for the count of four. I wanted to tattoo this moment onto myself. I could not last ’til four.
Finally after so many months, after administering that burn to my hand I no longer felt numb.
*
In her mind it was old news, she reminded herself, for she’d known all this since that time Himself had taken her to the hospital. She was telling them all that time Jimmy was gone. She knew that they would take Jimmy from her. And they had done it. There was nothing new in this, she told herself. She would not allow for surprise.
What did surprise her was how angry she became at her husband, who by virtue of his own inconvenient death had absented himself from this final chapter. She longed for him to see the results of their enterprise, to see precisely what they’d achieved. She stared at the wall and actively wondered how much more stupid two people could have been.
*
She would tell the world when she was ready. She felt she’d a plan once she closed the door on them. She just could not recall what it was. She sat into the chair and immediately worried about what they had been saying in the bank, that Jimmy had gone to America to be shut of her.
*
Even tho’ Jimmy was nowhere near New Jersey she scans every scene of the film for a sighting of him, a boot, an elbow, an eyebrow — that rare remote chance. A television documentary about men waking up in New Jersey on the day they are due to ship out to Iraq surprises her in its timing and she compulsively views it knowing this to be a poor decision. There’s women stood among them, women, and not just that shiny-eyed wife she’s used to seeing hand over children, forever dressed in snowsuits, to their fathers. Women kiss their husbands goodbye. The men aren’t going no place. Women in uniforms with rucksacks about them. Women, she repeats to herself, there were women there for God’s sake. Could Jimmy not have tumbled into the arms of some girl? The Lord Save Us to even think such a thought. It broke her out in a reluctant smile. It makes her sad for one reason and it’s not goodbye to families. It’s that her Jimmy could have found himself a wife. She briefly imagines Jimmy in some kind of a squadron or situation where it’s him, only him and thirty-two women in uniforms: she tries to imagine him among them. But he looks lost and the image of a shirtless male is all she can draw up. She can see her Jimmy looking at the man’s face and body and shame her as it might, the idea of it breaks her.
She’s angry because her tears are interrupting the details of the documentary and all she’s after these days since Jimmy died is details. If she can pin down the details of his life, there’s more chance she can imagine him alive again. The way the soldiers are strapped into the stand-up-style plane or helicopter, the green everything, the Tourettey eyes, the fact they don’t seem too fussed, they’re shipping out resigned to what they’ll face. Mostly they don’t know they say, they speculate but they don’t know. They speak acronyms, she notices. She’s surprised to see them stopping in Shannon, staring out the window, no idea where they are, some just continue to play hand-held games or they do word search.
And she’s back imagining her Jimmy on a similar plane at Shannon, with his green-trousered brigade leaning against that window pointing to things. It’s fading now. She can see him pressing his head to the back of the seat, pretending to know nothing about it, maybe pretending not to be of it at all.
She phones Joanie during the ads of the documentary. How’s she doing there and did she know there were women over there in the army too? Joanie didn’t but sure it doesn’t surprise her. What’s she doing? Watching a programme. Does she need a bit of company? Arra no. Well now. Quietly, it’s about soldiers, yes, going to Iraq. She’ll be over to her now, put the kettle on. If you insist on watching it, you shouldn’t be alone for you’ll never sleep after the like of it. When she replaces the phone, she notices how dirty the head of it is from the picking up and dropping and means to clean it. She wonders does Joanie think she’s done something she shouldn’t have in watching the programme.