Freckles(35)

Come on, Freckles, Cyclops finally says, let’s get you home.

I allow him to pull me up and open my eyes. When I do, he’s staring right at me, intensely, nose to nose. Uh oh.

Feels good, doesn’t it, he says, the buzz.

What the hell did you give me.

I call it Jetlag. Developed it with some lads.

You made this. Jesus, Cyclops, you could go to prison forever. What the hell is in it.

Ssh, I won’t tell. Cool though, isn’t it.

I preferred being drunk, I feel like I’m going to fall asleep.

But isn’t that the best feeling, right before you go asleep, all woozy and sleepy and cosy. He shimmies his body beside me. I don’t like how he feels against me. Sharp corners, a bag of bones. Wrong.

When I’m in bed, yeah, not when I’m out.

So let’s go to bed. They’ve rooms here. His hands are tight around my waist.

No, no, no, I back away, loosening his grip. Not a good idea.

Why not, he says. Jamie and Marion are probably pounding away at each other now, laughing at us.

He said that to hurt me, to make me feel vengeful. I may feel like I just got off a flight to Australia and left my soul at the stop-off in Singapore, but I know what he’s doing. You just want to get back at them, Cyclops, I say.

So, don’t you, he asks. Isn’t that why you called me.

No. I called you because you’re my friend.

He laughs. Freckles, I haven’t heard from you since you left.

I don’t recall you ringing me either.

Because we’re not friends, he says playfully, prodding me in the side with his finger to emphasise each point.

I step back.

Look, I really don’t care what they do, I say. Jamie and I were already broken up. He didn’t do anything wrong. I need to concentrate on my own life. I grab my bag, I’m ready to leave now. I shouldn’t have come. He’s right. Cyclops and I were never friends without Jamie and Marion, it was the four of us but only because of two of us. Marion and I brought Jamie and Cyclops into the fold. Marion’s right, the fact that she and Jamie felt something for each other without me and Cyclops around is something special. Outside in the car park, I wait by the van for him while he’s paid. The bouncers are still at the door. A girl is puking behind a car. Her friend holds her shoes and pats her back distractedly while staring into the distance. A fella is on his own, friends dispersed, head in his hands as if his life has fallen apart.

I don’t care what you say but I know you do care, Cyclops sings, tauntingly, joining me at the van, carrying his equipment, continuing where we left off. You and Jamie were serious. He was going to marry you, he told me that.

We were never going to get married. Never.

Well he had it all planned, had the ring and everything, and then you just left.

He didn’t have the ring, I say, annoyed.

Okay, maybe he didn’t, he laughs, but he was serious about you.

He opens the back of the van, puts his stuff inside. It smells of fish. Rotting fish.

Jesus, I cover my nose and step away.

My boat stuff is in there. Well, can I tempt you.

What, in there.

He shrugs. Easier than getting a room and I don’t want to spend the cash I just made. Come on, he says, coming over to me again, hands on my waist, pulling me close to him. Just a quick one, I’ll give you another pill.

Fuck no, Cyclops. Come on, let’s go home.

He bangs the van doors shut angrily. Jesus, you’ve no problem fucking everyone else you see, Allegra, but not me. How many of my brothers. Two or three.

One, I say, but really it’s two. Inky, too, secretly. He used to write me poems. And I don’t sleep with everyone I see, thank you very much. I feel the tremble of insult in my voice.

Obviously not, he says, then gets into the van and starts the engine before I’ve even got in. I’d gladly take any other way to get home right now, but he’s all that I have. Him, his fishy Chewbacca van and his Jetlag pills, and the damn stuff has worn off now. I’m wide awake, wary of him pulling over and trying it on again. So I turn my body away from him, rest my head against the cold window and pretend to be asleep as he speeds home, music blaring, chain-smoking, not another word from him the entire journey home.

Jamie gone. Marion gone. Cyclops gone. Another one off my list.

Easter is over. Bank holiday Monday, it’s time to return to Dublin and I’ve mixed feelings about it. I’m programmed to hate leaving home. Maybe the newborn in me, deep down, remembers the abandonment after the umbilical cord was snipped. Maybe it’s really because I don’t know what I’m going back to. And I still haven’t done what I moved there to do. I left with fireworks. I was sent off on my trip of exploration with good grace and hope but the people I left behind rarely hear from me and I haven’t delivered. Nothing to report. They moved on and I got a bit stuck.

I’m concerned about Pops. About leaving him and about staying with him. He was up when I got home at 4 a.m. checking the piano and the grandfather clock, searching for the mice. I sat up listening to him go from the shed in the back garden down the hall to the clock, back and forth, back and forth for tools and mousetraps.

I will be glad to leave this mayhem.

I will be scared to leave this mayhem.

He’s always been unique. He drove too fast but was always late for everything. Let me sleep until noon and fed me ice cream at midnight. Woke me in the middle of the night to show me a spider lacing its web across a window in the moonlight, or at sunrise for a walk on the beach to examine crabs and lift rocks to discover creatures. He would set up his own crab race, on a rock, where we would choose our own crab and cheer them on, then we’d walk back to our house sideways, hands nipping in the air, like crabs, to the amusement of passers-by. He was so good at showing me wonderment, the beneath the surface of everything, he didn’t want to hear me say yuck or shy away from touching something from the natural world.