Chapter Fifty-Three
Marty
I broke up with Ciara two months ago.
It was a joint decision. Communication was breaking down and neither of us had the energy or desire to battle it out when walking away and being respectful was an option.
While I've had my doubts in the last few months, I’m finding more peace with it.
The fog of sadness I was waking up with now lifts by the time I've had my run and my second coffee.
When I'm at work, I find I can forget how she snorts a little when she laughs and how she never gave me a cup of tea without a biscuit.
Sometimes, when I'm walking AJ, I feel happy for her that she can now go on and meet someone else who is ready for marriage and babies and giving her all the things she wants.
And now, on a bright late May morning, on a bike ride with Da, I finally feel like it was the right decision.
“You look like you've been sleeping more,” Dad says as we wheel the bikes into his garage.
I stayed over last night, went to the pub with a few friends, and today Maeve is coming over for lunch before she flies off to Paris for another work trip.
I'll be working tonight, but it's good to know I now have a day of relaxing, eating Mum's roast dinner and irritating my sister ahead of me now our exercise is done.
“Yeah,” I say. “I've been going to bed a bit earlier, when I can. Last night helped too. Never thought I'd sleep so well in my childhood single bed that is almost a foot too small for my lanky arse.”
“And to think you shared it with Arnie many a night.” Dad chuckles.
My eyes widen. “You weren't supposed to know about that.”
“Oh, I didn't at the time. It takes me a long time to catch up with what's going on, but when I know, I know,” he says, tapping his nose. “Come on. Let's go inside and annoy your mother until Maeve gets here and then we can piss her off too.”
“Sounds like a plan. But I call shotgun on the shower!” I race off, my cleats clip-clopping on the driveway.
After I’m showered and dressed, I go to the kitchen and make a coffee. I call for AJ as I slip on my trainers, getting ready to take him for a walk.
“I've already taken him,” Mum says when I reach for his lead on the kitchen counter.
“Serious? Thanks, Ma,” I say giving her a peck on the top of her head. “How's the bird doing?”
She follows my nod to the oven where a chicken is roasting. I can smell all the right things; garlic, lemon, rosemary and thyme.
“Grand,” she says. “Marty, could we sit down and have a wee chat?”
Mum moves to the circular kitchen table and sits. It's then that I see she has something in her hands. With AJ on my heels, I go to the table and sit, feeling both curious and alarmed.
She sucks in a deep breath, then starts talking.
“You're either going to hate me or love me for this. Maybe it will be both, if I'm lucky, but I have thought long and hard about this many times over the years and I still stand by my decision.”
I open my mouth to speak but she doesn’t give me a chance.
“What you've done and achieved and experienced in the last few years, Marty, it's really quite remarkable.
And you did it on your own terms. And I'm not talking about your work achievements or your travel and life experiences, more who you are, who you've grown to be. Marty, that's the real success.”
“Ma,” I say, my eyes narrowing on the things she holds in her hands. They're postcards. Postcards from a sunny place with blue seas and skies.
She inhales, exhales. Her hands are shaking a little. “Jenna sent you a postcard from Crete every summer for the last four years. I'm assuming her brother was still working there, or maybe she just went back because it was... it was where she met you.”
My mouth is open but there are no words. There isn't even much air moving in or out.
“You weren't here when they arrived. You were always somewhere else, travelling, or you’d moved out.
You were just living your life. And then you met Ciara and I thought maybe it wouldn't help to see them. I thought after the first few, she would stop. Jenna, I mean. But no, she sent you a postcard every year, on your birthday.”
I dig my fingernails in the flesh of each palm and bite down on the flesh of my cheek. Staring at the postcards in my mother’s hands, my tongue lies limp in my mouth.
“And I know this summer is when you said you'd reunite, back in Crete.”
“It's next week, Ma,” I say. The date has been ingrained on my brain for five years. I have no plans to go but that doesn't mean I've not been thinking about it.
“I know, son,” she says. She flattens her hands on the table, over the postcards which are face up. I see then there's something else with them; an envelope. “I think you should go.”
“Oh, do you?” I splutter. “I have your permission?”
“It's not like that.” My mother holds my gaze, doesn't shrink like maybe she would have once. “Not at all. You can do what you want, but I want to give these to you now.”
“Why now?” I say my throat dry and hoarse. It's a miracle I'm not shouting. That or the years of therapy finally paying off. “Why not a few months ago? Give me more time to think and make plans, for Christ's sake.”
“You'd only just broken up with Ciara. You needed to heal.”
“This could have helped!”
“That wouldn't have been fair to Jenna. You would have been rebounding.”
“I don't think hiding her post to me for five years is very fair to her, Ma.” My voice is louder but still I'm not shouting.
Now the shock has worn off, I know yelling won't help.
I just want to read Jenna's words. I want to touch something she has touched.
I want to have whatever scraps of information I can about her, and about how the last five years have treated her.
“That's probably true,” Mum says. “But I am telling you. Aren't I? I always intended to tell you.”
“So now you want me to go to her? Why, Ma? You hardly encouraged it five years ago.”
“You were younger, and you were grieving. And Jenna... when she said she wanted you to take this time, I think it was the right thing to do.”
“Well, that only makes two of you.” I feel something like pain flood back. It doesn't sting or ache as such, it's more muted or softened than that. It's almost nostalgic, like I am tapping into a painful memory that still means something and while it's not comfortable, it's not totally unpleasant.
“And you survived,” she says. “Look at you, Marty. Look at what you've done and enjoyed in the last five years. Ciara may not have worked out, but you had happy times together. That counts for something.”
I rub my hands over my face, my beard scratching my fingers. “Can I... can I just read the postcards please?”
Mum coughs, clearing her throat. “There's something else,” she says.
“Jesus, what now?”
“It's a letter,” she says, and her voice is lower, her gaze more earnest. “From Arnie.”
Whatever breath I have in my lungs evaporates now. The wobble in my chin and the heat in my eyes come from nowhere.
“He wanted me to give this letter to you, when you had fallen in love again,” she says.
I hold my hands up in a stop action when I see her fingers twitch. I'm not ready for this. Not yet. I need to gather my emotions and my thoughts, even if my tears are now a lost cause.
“Why didn't you give this to me when I was with Ciara?” I ask as steadily as I can. “Last year, when we moved in together?”
Mum nods and there are tears in her eyes too. “I nearly did. When you took her to Costa Rica, I thought maybe you were going to propose, but your father told me to wait. He didn't say why, but now I wonder if he knew all along it wouldn't work out.”
“Dad's as bad as you,” I say, trying to smile but failing.
“Your father thinks you should go to Crete.”
“How? I don't have flights. The resort will be all booked up. I have AJ to think of.”
“We'll have him, you know that.”
“What about work?”
“You give that place everything, they can give you something back,” she says. “Call them now and tell them.”
I flatten my hands on the table, close my eyes for a moment just to pause and breathe. “I don't know how I feel about Jenna anymore. And she probably won’t even be there.”
“There's only one way to answer those questions, son,” Dad says from behind me. I turn to look at him, his hair still damp.
“We just want you to be happy and have the love you deserve,” Ma says, her eyes almost as moist as mine.
And then she slides over four postcards and a letter.