The First Time I Said Goodbye Read online

  When we reached the room itself Sam whispered in my ear that I should brace myself, but even his warning could not have prepared me for the blast of noise, colour and cheering which greeted us. I was vaguely aware of ‘Welcome Home’ blasting over the sound system and a gaudy arrangement of balloons and banners marking both our American and Irish heritage. Several trestle tables in a corner were heaving with yet another Hegarty special buffet, I assumed.

  Crowds of cheery-faced people waved at us, some with glasses sloshing overfilled drinks in our direction, and let out a chorus of cheers, shouts, exclamations of great joy and the odd stifled sob. Some of it I understood – some of it, well, I wasn’t even sure it was being said in English.

  My mother was enveloped into the crowd so that I could just about see her hair bobbing in and out of great big hugs every now and again. I half-expected them to lift her above their heads and encourage her in a bit of crowd-surfing.

  A glass of wine was thrust into my hand by a gruff-looking man in a starched white shirt, which groaned at the buttons. His head was bowed and he was grimacing as if he was trying to force a smile on his face when, clearly, smiling was alien was to him. “Cheers!” he barked and turned to return to the mêlée.

  “You should consider yourself honoured,” Sam whispered in my ear. “That’s Uncle Peter. Never known to have bought a drink for anyone in his entire life. This may go down in the family legend book.” He was smiling and I couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Let’s get a seat before this crowd are finished with their grand big welcome and there isn’t a seat to be had.”

  I followed him across the room, largely ignored by the crowd around me – word clearly not having got out there beyond Peter that I was the prodigal daughter’s daughter. I was glad of the vague anonymity and was only too happy to slip behind a table and sip at my drink while Sam sauntered off to the bar to buy his own.

  Such a family gathering was, it has to be said, a little overwhelming. We never had anything like it back home. I’d been to parties of course, but nothing as raucous as this (well, there had been a few sorority parties when I was at college, but even those were wildly different in their own way and I’d known more than two or three people at them – and of course, everyone spoke with the same accent as me and used words I understood).

  Sam returned with two glasses and a bottle of wine. “Saves us fighting through the masses to get to the bar every time we want a top-up,” he said, pouring his own glass and topping up the glass Peter had given to me. “I’d say, dear cousin, if we have to be here then we get sloshed.”

  “I don’t really drink that much,” I said, knowing that I sounded like a party pooper. But then again I was on my holidays and Sam seemed as if he would be a decent enough partner in crime. I saw my mother walking towards us, a host of grinning women looking at me as if I was a newborn they were setting their eyes on for the first time, and slugged at my drink. “Then again,” I said, “when in Rome and all that.”

  “Good woman yourself!” Sam said cheerfully, slugging from his own glass.

  As it turned out Sam proved to be a very effective deflector-shield. He was able to manage the hordes of aunties and cousins and family friends effectively – telling them about my business at the bakery and steering them away from too many questions about Craig. I guess the single comment had stuck with him. He was also able to steer the conversation away from my father when it started to get a little maudlin, and all the while he managed to make sure my drink was well topped up, which I was grateful for. Soon I found myself relaxing in his company and that of the family around me, allowing their warmth and friendliness to wash over and comfort me. It felt nice to be part of something bigger – to think that we were all tied in some way together. I liked it. It made me feel fuzzy and warm. I felt comforted in a way I hadn’t in a long time – comforted and cushioned by the warm way they welcomed me into the fold. They didn’t have to. I knew that. I was just a distant relative – someone they had never met before. I was a name on Christmas cards. A profile on Facebook. An entry on the family tree – somewhere off at the side on a very small branch. I wasn’t someone they had sat round the Christmas table with or whose First Communion they had attended en masse. And yet there they were, buying me drinks, offering me hugs and, in Sam’s case, treating me like a little sister who needed gentle care.

  After three glasses of wine it was enough to make me feel a little weepy – so I stepped outside into the cool night air to catch my breath. Digging in my bag I lifted out my cell – a need to speak to Craig to tell him how this felt so good had washed over me. I dialled his number, put the phone to my ear and smiled when I heard his voice.

  “Hey, babe,” I said softly.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said jovially.

  I felt myself breathe out and relax at the free and easy way he spoke to me and tried to push away that little nagging voice in me that wondered when he had stopped speaking to me kindly every time we spoke.

  “I’m having a lovely time, Craig. You should be here. Ireland, you know, it’s true what they say about the people being so friendly. You wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe it at all. They are having a party – for Mom of course, but I’m being made to feel so special too. Oh Craig, it’s something else! It really is.”

  “Have you been drinking?” he asked, his voice still jovial but still I bristled.

  “A few, but that’s not why I’m calling. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “That makes a change,” he said – not harshly, I noted, but with a sad sort of resignation and I felt myself inhale again.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered into the air as one of my cousins, or uncles, or friends stumbled out of the door, winking in my direction and lighting up a cigarette.

  “Aw-right, pet?” he nodded and I forced a smile onto my face although something was constricting deep inside me.

  “I’m sorry too,” Craig said.

  “I do love you,” I muttered. “And I do wish you were here.”

  “Annabel . . .” Craig said, before he paused, and I steadied myself, wondering what he would say next. “I wish . . . I wish I was there too.”

  We hung up, the conversation ended, and I turned to where my cousin/uncle/family-friend was puffing on his cigarette. I looked at it enviously. I had quit when my dad took ill – a futile act of solidarity even though his cancer wasn’t in his lungs and he had never smoked in his life.

  “Can I bum one?” I asked.

  “No bother,” he responded, proffering his packet to me.

  I took it and he lit it for me, and I breathed in the warm smoke, letting it fill my lungs. I held it there, relishing the sensation of it in my chest before breathing out.

  “Fancy a drink?” I asked the man before me. “It’s on me.”

  “Never say no to a drink,” he said smiling. “I’m Paddy – pleased to meet you!”

  “Well, Paddy, I can categorically say I’m pleased to meet you too – so on to the bar!”

  Chapter 8

  I know you will be angry and hurt. I know that and that hurts me too. If things were different. I wish things were different.

  * * *

  Moments of the night before flashed before my eyes – my poor, stingy, slightly swollen and definitely bloodshot eyes. I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth and tried to will my eyes to open, but the very noise of trying seemed unbearably loud. I was aware I was lying face down, almost suffocating in the pillow with its fancy Egyptian-cotton cases. My head felt as if it was swollen to three times its normal size but a quick feel reassured me that it was still very much ordinary size. I quickly – well, actually quite slowly – ascertained that I was still almost fully clothed. A shoe appeared to be missing. My left one. Something in my head registered some memory of a Christy Brown, My Left Foot, joke.

  That memory was followed by a flash of me performing my party piece – a rather tuneless rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ standing alo
ft on a chair. My mother’s face flashed into my mind – sitting on her chair, her face a picture of pride. She was hugging Dolores and clapping for me and I, like some child coming top of the spelling bee, was grinning wildly back.

  I rolled over on the bed, my head seeming to take forever to follow the rest of my body and, feeling that the room was still spinning, I decided to make the long roll back to where I had been.

  Other memories came back, one at a time, as I slipped in and out of sleep. I believe Paddy – he who I had bummed a cigarette off – had bought me tequila. After my conversation with Craig, and despite the fact I never drank hard liquor, I downed a shot, or maybe three – I lost count somewhere between that cigarette, which made me feel light-headed, and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

  I had danced. Sweet God, I had danced. That was one of those other things I hadn’t done in a while – apart from a quick shuffle around the dance floor at weddings with Craig. I even attempted some sort of jig. I know I saw my mother do the same – and I’m pretty sure it was with more decorum than me. Decorum – it was a word I didn’t think I would ever be able to use in connection with myself again.

  A knock on my bedroom door was followed by a cheerful hello from Sam who walked in, looking fresh as a daisy, and sat down beside me.

  “A good night?” he asked with a smirk.

  “I don’t really remember,” I grimaced as he handed me a glass of water and two paracetamol.

  “I have other treats for you too,” he said, taking a few boxes from his pockets. “Here, take a Berocca – it’s a vitamin – it will bring you round a bit. And some Milk Thistle, perfect for hangovers.”

  “I’m not sure this is a hangover,” I said as I glugged at the cool glass of water. “I’m pretty sure this is what dying feels like.”

  “And you said you didn’t really drink?” he laughed.

  “Don’t,” I warned, the very thought of alcohol making my stomach start to turn.

  “Did you know Uncle Peter even bought you a second drink? The Derry Journal was nearly called, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Did I make an ass of myself?”

  “No, cousin, you didn’t. You let your hair down. I have a feeling you haven’t done that in a while.”

  I shook my head (gently, this was no time for rapid movements) and tried to remember the last time I had let myself go with such abandon, quickly coming to the conclusion that actually I had never let myself go with such abandon ever before. Ever.

  Sam stood up and walked to the en suite where he switched the shower on full blast.

  “I’ve slipped some aromatherapy goodies in there – stuff perfect for the morning after the night before. You may get yourself washed and dressed and I’ll have some breakfast ready. Take your time – no rush!”

  “Do you not have to go to work today?” I asked him, aware that time was marching on.

  “Shop doesn’t open on Sundays,” he said. “Actually, we have something a lot more hellish to do than work today. It’s Sunday roast in my mother’s house, which is a treat all of its own. And by saying it’s a treat I don’t necessarily mean in a good way. But count yourself lucky, Annabel – we could have had to go to Mass with them. Lucky for you and me both, I told them we went last night at half seven. If anyone asks, it was Father Paul, the Gospel was according to Saint Luke and the homily was about the perils of drink.” He raised an eyebrow as he left the room and I gingerly set about getting ready.

  * * *

  It seemed the healing powers of a shower, Sam’s patented hangover cure and his breakfast of bacon and cream-cheese bagels were doing the trick.

  As we sat and chatted at the kitchen table, his glass doors open to the balmy summer morning sunshine, it struck me that of all the people and all the random memories which were coming back to me from the night before I couldn’t remember too much of Sam. Of course I remembered him sitting with me, and I’m sure there was a challenge or two involving a drink of undetermined provenance, and I know he had cheered as I reached the high notes in my party piece, but still . . .

  “Sam,” I asked, “did I miss your party piece or do you still owe me that honour?”

  “Ah, my friend, I should have told you. I’m exempt from party pieces. In fact, my mother strictly forbids it.”

  “Surely you can’t be that bad? You’ve heard me sing? Surely no one can be worse than that?” I blushed involuntarily once again at the memory of my crooning.

  “It’s not my singing she’s afraid of,” he said, lifting another bagel and liberally spreading cream cheese on it. “I’ve quite a good voice if I say so myself. She just doesn’t really like me drawing attention to myself. Not in any kind of flamboyant manner.”

  I thought of Auntie Dolores and her ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’ routine which left little to the imagination and I felt confused.

  As if it was written all over my face, Sam piped up: “Anna, I’m not just the only single in the village. I’m the only gay in the village too – and my mother, well, she hasn’t really come to terms with that yet.”

  I looked at him, startled and not sure how to react – not because I was horrified at him being gay – I was, at worst, a little shocked by it – but mostly because I’d just assumed he . . . well, I hadn’t really assumed anything. I’d just seen him as Sam.

  “Everyone knows, of course,” he went on. “It’s not something I keep secret. I don’t announce it on first meeting people – because, well, there is nothing to announce. It’s just who I am – but I’m not in the closet. My mother, well, she pretends to get it. And she even pretends to be cool about it – but I very quickly learned that she doesn’t really understand at all. She still thinks it’s just a phase and when I get it all out of my system I’ll settle down with a nice woman and furnish her with 2.4 grandchildren and a dog called Buster.”

  The great boy his mother was so keen to marry off. How must that feel? In that moment I felt my heart ache for him a little.

  “She tolerates it,” he said. “She tolerates me.”

  “I think she loves you very much,” I said and I meant it. I was sure there was more than mere tolerating going on.

  “Okay, to word it better, she tolerates my lifestyle – only just. As I said, she keeps thinking, for whatever reason, that it’s a phase. I try to tell her that twenty years is a bit more than a phase, and that before I came out I was gay and always had known I was, but I think there is a part of her which will always think I’m nothing more than an attention-seeker. She wants me to modify my behaviour – you know, so that when the day comes when I finally admit I love women instead, I don’t have too seedy a past to dig over.”

  He was upset as he spoke. He tried to keep an upbeat tone to his voice but I could tell this was hurting him.

  “Surely she should just accept you as you are?”

  “She should,” he said. “And in a lot of ways she does. I mean, we don’t talk about it all the time. It’s not this gaping chasm between us, but it is there and when things happen like family get-togethers I can feel her watching me out of the corner of her eye, scared of her life I’m going to cop a feel of a hot waiter or launch into a rendition of ‘I Am What I Am’.”

  “Is that your party piece then?” I asked, stupidly. I don’t even know why I said it. It felt awkward and horrible but I didn’t know how to have this conversation with him. It wasn’t one of those ordinary run-of-the-mill things you talked about with someone you had only known a matter of days.

  “Ah no. The thing is, my mother lives in absolute terror of me acting the flamboyant queer when, apart from the frock shop obviously, I’ve never shown an ounce of queendom in my life. My party piece, should I ever have been allowed to perform it, is actually ‘Fire and Rain’ by James Taylor, which is pretty much middle-of-the-road, chilled-out, middle-aged toot.”

  I thought of my standing, American flag flying over my head, singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ while Auntie Dolores cheered
on and I pondered on the ridiculousness of it all. I was allowed to be flamboyant but only because I fitted the mould.

  “I’m sorry to hear all this,” I offered pathetically. I knew there was little point in telling him that it would get better and that she would more than likely wake up one morning and realise that it was okay to have a gay son and that she had nothing to be embarrassed about. And then I realised how horrendous it must be for him to feel as if the very person he was was somehow embarrassing to the people who loved him most. Perhaps I was being all sappy American about it, or perhaps it was the horrors of the hangover knocking my emotions all out of kilter, but I felt tears well up in my eyes.

  “It sucks,” I offered as a tear slid down my cheek.

  Sam reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “As I said, it’s not there all the time. But some times are harder to deal with than others.”

  I knew even as he spoke that, while it was not there all the time, it clearly was always there at the back of his mind, no matter how hard he tried to push things back and ignore them. I knew that because I was the self-confessed queen of hiding things and pushing them to the back of my mind when I felt they were too uncomfortable to deal with. I knew why sometimes that was a necessary evil.

  Drying my eyes and sipping from my coffee, I offered a wry smile. “I suppose sometimes you just learn to live with things.”

  * * *

  The day my father was told his cancer was terminal was the worst day of my life. It was worse in many ways than the day he died because we had to face the great big unknown entity that was preparing to say goodbye to each other. How do you do that? How do they expect you to do that? How does anyone expect you to live with the knowledge that someone you love so very intensely is going to suffer and fade out in front of your very eyes? And I was expected to keep going – to keep grinning as people came in to place their cupcake or their celebration cakes order and all the while I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs to just stop, have some respect and start believing in the cruelty of life rather than the beauty of it.