34
I don’t know how long I stay in Leonard’s bedroom, reeling from the force of Jack’s words, from the truth of them. When I head into the kitchen, expecting him to be gone, he’s quietly packing, sleeves rolled up, jaw set. He doesn’t look up when I enter the room, refuses to acknowledge my presence. I lift one of the empty boxes we brought with us and we work together in silence, folding and stuffing and wrapping until there’s nothing left to fold or stuff or wrap.
It’s early evening by the time we finish. Jack locks the door behind us and drops the keys through Mme Chave’s letterbox. We climb into the car without saying anything – Jack hasn’t uttered a syllable since our fight and despite being acutely aware of the need to apologise, I’m too afraid to broach the subject, can’t bear to hear Jack tell me this thing between us is over before it’s begun. Jack drives us back to the guesthouse, his eyes fixed firmly on the road. When we pull into La Maison Bleue, he turns off the ignition and faces me, making eye contact for the first time since our fight, wordlessly willing me to say something, anything. I don’t know where to begin. He sighs, unbuckling his seatbelt, and gets out of the car.
I stay there for several moments, leaning my head against the window, watching Jack as he walks down the garden path to his room, shoulders hunched, and opens the door. Inside, the light goes on. Is he undressing? Lying on his bed? Is he waiting for me to go to him? I run my hand along the gear stick, the last thing Jack touched, move my palm to the driver’s seat and rub the imprint of his body on the leather.
I can see the whole house from here – the shutters Leonard and I repainted, the path leading to the garden we resurrected, Ari’s fort. The mirabelle plum tree has seen better days, an infestation of aphids causing the leaves to curl. I’m not sure it’ll make it. But the fig tree is starting to thrive, its branches finally bearing fruit. Maybe the older mirabelle passed its remaining resources on to the younger tree, nurturing it, sharing its secrets on how to survive in this world.
~
After putting Ari to bed, I make my way to the bedside table in my room. Pulling out the drawer, I remove an envelope and empty its contents onto the bed. Sixteen years I’ve been carrying Mum’s ring around. I think I liked the idea of taking her with me wherever I went. That as long as I still had the ring, I still had a mother. I slide the ring onto my finger and hold it up to the light one last time. Taking it off, I put it back in the envelope and put the envelope in my bag beside the door.
The next morning I get up early, splash cold water on my face and brush my teeth. I throw on a pair of purple leggings, a lime-green t-shirt and a baby-pink sun visor I got for an eighties party, and run down the stairs. I make myself a coffee and knock it back, then open the French doors and march to Jack’s room, steadying my rapid heartbeat with deep breaths en route. He answers the door in a pair of deliciously form-hugging pale-grey briefs and I momentarily forget why I’m here. He squints at me through sleep-deprived eyes.
‘Can I go running with you?’ I say peppily, jogging on the spot.
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Now?’
‘Don’t you run in the morning?’
‘Not on Sundays. Do you even run?’
‘I came fourth in the all-Ireland schools cross-country championships,’ I lie.
He leans his hand high on the door frame and looks at me wearily.
‘Fiadh, I …’
‘Please, Jack?’ I plead, terrified of what he might say next. ‘I’ll go easy on you.’
I stick my tongue out playfully. He sighs.
‘Wait here while I get dressed.’
Twenty-four hours ago, I’d have been invited to the disrobing party, but I’ll take what I can get at this stage. Jack appears a few minutes later in his running gear and sprints ahead of me out the gate. I charge after him, determined to keep pace. We jog briskly up the lane towards town, waving at Sabrina and Theo inside Utopie as we pass. Reaching the far end of the village, Jack turns right and takes us up a hill leading deep into the countryside. After ten minutes, sweat is pouring from every orifice in my body.
‘You alright back there, Murphy?’ says Jack, with an air of satisfaction. He turns to run backwards as I bend over with my hands on my knees, looking deeply constipated.
‘Never better,’ I say, red-faced and out of breath. ‘Could do this all day!’
We keep going for another thirty seconds before I concede.
‘Alright, you win! Can we please take a break now?’
He stops and waits for me to catch up, handing me his water bottle when I reach him.
‘Come on,’ he says, leading me to a grassy patch off the road. We sit on the ground, the orange rooftops of Cordes gleaming in the sun in the distance.
‘Jesus, how far did we climb?’ I say when I get my breath back.
‘Enough for me to realise you were talking out of your backside when you said you were a cross-country champion,’ Jack says.
‘I had to get you out of your room somehow,’ I say sheepishly.
‘Well, you got me here. What is it you want to say?’
His expression is unreadable. I can’t tell if he’s pissed off or enjoying my discomfort.
‘Jack, I’m so sorry,’ I grovel. ‘I said some truly awful things, things I didn’t mean. I was an arsehole.’
‘You were a huge arsehole,’ he says, removing his hoodie.
‘The world’s biggest,’ I say.
‘It’s nice we can agree on something.’
He smiles at me affably, a truce on the horizon.
‘When I read that letter from Leonard’s daughter, I felt like, “Oh here’s another person I trusted and didn’t actually know at all”. It just gets tiring being disappointed all the time.’
‘There’s not a conspiracy here, Fiadh,’ Jack says, massaging his shoulder. ‘People disappoint one another. And I hate to break it to you, but we do it over and over again. Human growth isn’t an increasing slope on an exponential graph. We do good, we fuck up. And repeat.’
I raise my knees up to my chest and pull a tuft of grass out of the ground.
‘You’re right,’ I say in a half-whisper.
Jack raises his eyebrows. ‘Sorry, can I get that again?’
‘I know, I know. I can’t believe I’m saying it either. But it’s true. What you said about me blaming others to avoid taking responsibility for my fuck-ups, you were right. I guess it’s easier highlighting other people’s shortcomings than owning your failures.’
Jack looks at me with a serious expression and takes a drink from his water bottle, passing it to me when he’s done.
‘Helen wants to make another go of it.’
He says it in the same tone you’d use to announce you’d just taken the bins out. I’m thrown by the mention of his soon-to-be ex-wife.
‘Oh, really?’ I say, in my best attempt at a breezy tone. I take a gulp of water and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
‘She says she’s spent the summer watching her sister and brother-in-law argue over custody details. She’s decided not to move to the States. She wants to see if there’s anything still there between us.’
‘And what do you think?’ I say hesitantly.
Jack exhales slowly. ‘Honestly? I think my marriage has been over for a long time. We’d be getting back together solely for Max, on my part anyway. I feel like maybe we could have made it work, but my heart isn’t in it anymore. It’s very much somewhere else.’
He shoots me a nervous side glance and I feel like my heart has doubled in size.
‘So …’ Jack looks down at the ground, feigning interest in a stone beside his left foot. ‘I know we haven’t talked about this, and maybe it’s presumptuous of me given we’ve been in each other’s lives for all of five minutes …’
I wince, remembering what I said at Leonard’s house.
‘But I think there’s something real here,’ he says. ‘These past few weeks, I’ve felt more myself, more aligned with the world than I have done in years. And that’s down to you. You challenge me, in a good way. Don’t get me wrong, you’re an incredibly frustrating person and you tend to make life needlessly complicated for yourself and everyone around you, but I love talking to you, and when I’m with you, I can see how I could be different, how I could be better. And I think … I think you know I might be good for you, too?’
I beam, unable to process what’s happening. Jack wants us to be together.
‘I know you’re good for me too,’ I say, reaching for his hand.
He looks at me with such warmth and affection, I want to hold on to this moment, remember what it feels like to be looked at like this, to be loved like this. To know that if this is all I’ll ever get, it’s enough.
‘I know it’ll be tricky at first, with you being here and me in the UK,’ Jack says, squeezing my hand. ‘But once you and Ari are back to Dublin, it’ll be a breeze. We can see each other every weekend. I’ll come over to you, bring you guys to London. Ari and Max can get to know each other. Max has always wanted a younger brother.’
My heart sinks. Dublin.
‘What’s the matter?’ says Jack, reading my thoughts.
‘What if I didn’t go back to Ireland?’ I say. ‘What if I stayed in France?’
‘Why would you stay here? I thought they found a buyer for the guesthouse?’
‘They have, but I want to stay. I haven’t figured it all out yet. All I know is, I can’t go back, only forward.’
Jack frowns. ‘Fiadh, I need to be in London. It’s where Max is. I’ve already missed so much this past year. I don’t want to miss him grow up.’
‘I would never ask you to do that,’ I say, shaking my head firmly.
His face crumples. ‘I’m not ready to lose this,’ he says.
I’m not either. I want to be with Jack with every fibre of my being, but I need to stay here. For me, for Ari. I can’t continue to allow life to happen to me. Decisions to be made for me. I don’t know what’s next. It’s time I figured that out.
‘You want to know something?’ I say. ‘I’d rather have these past few weeks and lose you than carry on as I was, us having never met.’
‘I’m sorry, have you been listening to New Radicals? Where is this optimism coming from?’
‘It’s not optimism. A wise person told me hope is better, so I’m gonna roll with that for a while, see where it takes me.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he says, grinning. ‘Who said that?’
‘Chuck Noland.’
‘Who?’ He looks perplexed.
‘From Cast Away .’
‘Tom Hanks again? Seriously? You’re obsessed.’
‘So he’s been rescued from the island and Helen Hunt has moved on, and it sucks. He’s lost Helen Hunt, he’s lost Wilson, the man has nothing left. But he refuses to throw in the towel. He says, “I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” The tide could bring fuck all but a beer can ring-pull and some driftwood, but it might bring a message in a bottle – or an Uber Eats. And we won’t know unless we fight for it, right? Unless we choose to breathe.’
‘That is unbearably cheesy,’ says Jack, pulling me into him. ‘C’mere, Murphy.’
~
Later, sometime after midnight, I remove Jack’s arm from around my waist and slide out of bed. Reaching for my underwear and t-shirt on the floor, I tiptoe to the desk in the corner of my room and open the lid of my laptop. A blue glow illuminates the immediate space around me. I open my email application and write to the owners of La Maison Bleue, telling them that if their buyer falls through, my son and I will be staying in France indefinitely and have a significant cash deposit.
I go to shut the lid of my laptop, hesitating for a moment. Reopening the app, I open a new email.
subject: Hi
Dad,
Let’s talk.
Fiadh
I hover over the ‘send’ button for several seconds before clicking it.
I walk back to bed and slip under the covers, spooning Jack. He grabs my hand, interlocking his fingers with mine. Closing my eyes, I try to decide on a subject for the A to Z game, but I’m asleep before I begin. There are no more lists to be made .