Chapter Nine #6
“Yeah, well, if they’re not educated, they could at least listen to people who are. No offense, I don’t know who you hang out with, but most people around here, their minds…” Eugene holds up a finger and thumb, a fraction apart. “That fucking size. On a good day. The bigger picture? Forget it.”
Cal scratches the back of his neck and considers that. “You got a point,” he says. “I guess if you spend your days farming, you gotta concentrate on what’s right in front of your nose. You don’t get much practice in seeing the big picture.”
“Don’t get me started,” Eugene says. “The biggest thing they can get moving is a fucking combine harvester, and if anyone comes along wanting to do something bigger, they melt down. They’ll be grateful for it in the end, they always are, but you can’t get that through their heads in advance.
You just have to put up with their bullshit till everything’s done and dusted, and they all come tell you how great you are.
My father says it was the same thing when he started the plant.
People freaking out, oh no it’ll taint the water supply or whatever the fuck, and once it was up and running, oh look at all these jobs aren’t you amazing. Jesus Christ.”
Cal sends up a prayer to whatever gods are out there that no one will pick this moment to take a leak. Eugene needs to talk, and Cal is safe: he’s an outsider. This kid, keeping himself at a genteel distance from peasant doings, hasn’t noticed that it’s not that clear-cut, these days.
“Rachel seemed like a smart kid to me,” Cal says. He’s being very careful. “Not as smart as you, maybe, but smart enough to see the big picture if you explained it to her. I woulda thought, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Eugene says. His eyes close, which makes him sway worse.
“You’d think. Her family aren’t bog-monsters, they can hold an actual dinner-table conversation that isn’t about sheep diseases, you’d think, right?
And Rachel, a lot of people thought she was just a dumb blonde, but that’s because they’re morons. She was smarter than all of them.”
“Well, I figured that much,” Cal says. “I didn’t know her too well, but I couldn’t see you getting engaged to no dummy.”
“Right. Exactly. People thought, because of the way she dressed and the way she talked…But underneath, she had a lot more going on. An actual thought process, with, like, depth, and…” Eugene loses his train of thought.
His eyes are still closed, and his face is drawn down in tight lines of misery.
“I heard drowning is really peaceful,” he says. “That could be bullshit, I don’t know.”
“But Rachel still didn’t get the big picture,” Cal says. Eugene can grieve on his own time.
Eugene jerks with anger again, his eyes flying open. “So? How the fuck was I supposed to know she wouldn’t? She was my girlfriend, I told her stuff. That’s normal. I’m allowed to do that. Like, what’s the big fucking deal?”
“Doesn’t seem like any big deal to me,” Cal agrees. “A man telling his woman what’s on his mind, that’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“And we didn’t have a fucking argument. People pulled that right out of their arses. She was just worried. She would’ve come round in the end.”
“You figure?”
“Of course she would. She just needed time, that’s what she was like, she always needed to think things—” Eugene’s knuckles are white on the rim of the sink. “I told him that. I told him.”
“But he didn’t agree,” Cal says. He’s not about to ask whether they’re talking about Tommy. He’s had plenty of suspects where Eugene is. Eugene is freewheeling down the tracks under his own desperate momentum, but one wrong touch, even the lightest, and he’ll derail.
“I knew her,” Eugene says. “We were together five years, did you know that? Since I was eighteen and she was sixteen. We knew each other our whole lives. If I said to just wait and she’d come round, he should have believed me.”
“Well,” Cal says, “you can see how he’d be a little bit edgy.”
Eugene looks around sharply. “What do you even know about it?”
“Hey, I ain’t badmouthing nobody,” Cal says, raising his hands. “Not my place. I’m only saying: when the stakes get high, folks can get a mite twitchy. Am I wrong?”
Eugene blinks hard, trying to focus his eyes on Cal.
“Fuck you,” he says, eventually. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.
Just…” He rears back from the sink and heads for the door, unsteadily.
“Fuck you,” he says again, over his shoulder.
Probably he’s trying to make a good exit, but on his way out he gets mixed up with some old guy coming in, and by the time he’s disentangled himself, the moment is gone.
Cal does his business and spends a long time washing his hands. He feels a little bit better about Trey’s manners, anyway. They may have some inconsistencies, but she’s a country mile ahead of the crown prince of Ardnakelty.
In Eugene’s defense, he’s having a rough month.
Eugene thinks Tommy did something to Rachel—Cal figures what he has is a suspicion rather than straight-up knowledge, or he’d be in even worse shape.
Eugene may be right or he may not, but either way, family dinner at the Moynihan mansion has to be a real laugh riot these days.
No wonder Tommy is keeping Eugene close to home. It’s got nothing to do with endorsements from Dickie O’Shea and his cheap suit. Tommy wants Eugene under his eye because he’s worried Eugene might crack, one way or another. From what Cal just saw, he’s right to worry.
The bathroom is cold and smells of some grim industrial bleach. Cal dries his hands and goes back into what feels more and more like the danger zone.
The drink and the chat have smoothed some of the jagged edges off the day.
Everyone’s posture has loosened; Mel is leaning forward with her elbows on the table, and Phil has given up on sitting like she’s wearing a dress, even though she is, and has her knees firmly planted apart.
Yvonne is licking her thumb and trying to rub away a drop of vodka and Coke that’s landed on her bosom; Julie is passing around her phone to show everyone a selfie Niall just sent her from the balcony of his new apartment.
They’re able, finally, to start talking about Rachel.
“Niall usedta fancy Rachel,” Julie says.
She takes the phone back and gazes at it, slightly unfocused.
“Ages back, when they were fourteen, like. He never said, but I knew. I keep wondering, what if they’d got together?
Maybe she’da gone off to Berlin with him.
Maybe they’d be sitting on that balcony right now.
Having those beers outa massive glasses. ”
“She wouldn’ta gone for your Niall,” Mel says. “She always wanted Eugene. Fuck alone knows why, but she did.”
“I’d say she felt sorry for him,” Yvonne says unexpectedly.
She frowns down at her good dress, which is too tight across the bust, and tries to hitch herself into place.
“Rachel was like that: a terrible softie for anything that needed looking after. All them fecking kittens. And that time your Niamh was getting bullied in school, Julie, sure that’s how they made friends to start with—”
“Why the fuck would she be sorry for Eugene Moynihan?” Phil wants to know. “Of all people?”
“She said no one understood him,” Julie says.
Phil snorts. “That’s what Niamh said, anyhow.
I know he’s an awful consequence, but I suppose he’s never had much choice, sure he hasn’t?
With Tommy always at him to be the heir to the throne, whether he wanted to or not. It’d have anyone’s head melted.”
“He’s still an awful consequence,” Phil says.
“He is, all right,” Julie acknowledges. “All the same, d’you know what”—she lowers her voice—“I wouldn’t say Rachel was stepping out on him. She’d feel too guilty.”
“In fairness,” Mel says, lifting an eyebrow, “that’s kinda the point people are making.”
“I know, yeah. But still. She wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t. You’d never know about anyone else.”
“You were asking around about that,” Phil says, pointing her pint at Lena.
“I was, yeah,” Lena says. She’s been waiting for this.
“How come? It’s a long time since you gave a shite about anything around here.”
The atmosphere has sharpened. Julie, who always hated arguments, ducks her head and starts picking polish off a thumbnail. It doesn’t bother Lena. The sediment of resentment was there all along, the same way it’s there in Noreen. She likes Phil for being open with it.
“It’s a long time since anyone around here came asking me for help,” she points out. “Ye all know Rachel called round to me, earlier that night. She was asking about her cat that was hurt, but I felt like there was something else she wanted to say.”
“That’s only hindsight,” Yvonne says. “We’re all doing it. There’s a fuckin’ epidemic of hindsight in these parts.”
“Maybe,” Lena says. “But once I heard the rumor going round, I reckoned if it was true, that could’ve been what she had on her mind. I’d like to know. Just to set my own mind at ease.”
“Why would she go to you about that?” Phil says. They’re all keeping their voices low, even Phil, who has five kids and coaches the camogie. “She hardly knew you.”
“ ’Cause I’m not close to anyone round here,” Lena says. Julie makes an inarticulate noise of protest, but Phil nods. “So whatever she told me, I’d keep it to myself.”
“Fair enough,” Phil says. “So what? What difference does it make now?”
“Tell us something,” Lena says. “How many of ye heard Sean wouldn’t let me have friends?”
There’s a silence. The women glance sideways at each other, or down at their drinks.
“All of us,” Phil says bluntly. Julie shoots her an agonized look. Phil ignores her.
“I know you did, yeah,” Lena says. “Did ye believe it?”
No one is sure what the right answer is.