The Rachel Incident(53)

In our fantasy, it went like this: in January, we would move to London. James would get an agent immediately, and I would get a job at Penguin Books. We would spend three to six months being wild and discovering the city, and then Carey’s mother would die, and Dr. Byrne would leave Deenie. They would both move to London, and we would live in a fabulously modern house, all of us artistes and writers (Carey would discover a great talent, we decided), and when we died our biographers would talk about us like we were a great collective of twenty-first-century geniuses. Our letters would be anthologised, just as soon as we got around to writing one another letters.

It was a nice fantasy, and perhaps it might have happened—a little of it, anyway—if I hadn’t been pregnant.





20


I DIDN’T SEE DEENIE for a while after getting my new job, and so when she called me one Thursday in early October I left my desk immediately, walking out into the car park to speak to her.

“Rachel,” she said, her voice sounding cheerful, and like she had missed me. “How are you? Listen, I’m having a dinner next Friday for dad’s book. The fifteenth. Will you come?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “You want me there?”

“Of course,” she cried. “You worked hard on this. You’re part of the team.”

I didn’t know I was pregnant yet. My seven-day pill breaks were decorated by brown spotting and nothing else. I thought that was fine.

Truthfully, I thought if anything was wrong with me it was that I was depressed. I even looked it up a few times online. I was tired, sluggish, snappy. I hated my new job, hated phoning people up to guilt them into charitable donations when many of them were on the verge of poverty themselves. I heard this a lot. The businessman suicides started up again, and I ended up talking to quite a few middle-aged women whose healthy husbands had suddenly died. This all struck me as good reasons to be depressed.

“I’d love to,” I said. “And I can’t wait to read the book!”

“Why don’t you come round on Saturday? As in, the day after tomorrow. I have a big box of advance copies. I’ll give you one, and we can have a glass of something.”

It sounded like heaven. I agreed immediately.

I came to the house on Saturday to find a journalist from The Irish Times talking to Deenie and a photographer snapping away at her next to a stack of her father’s old editions. Being the young, photogenic daughter of the dead poet, the PR people had put her forward for all kinds of interviews in the Irish press.

She was sunny for the hour they were there, but as soon as The Irish Times left, she went to the bathroom to wash her face.

“So sorry about that. I totally forgot they were coming. This isn’t really my scene at all,” she said grimly. “But I suppose it has to be done.”

I thought she was being falsely modest. “Oh, come on. Getting your photo in the paper, hair and make-up.”

She gave me a look. “Christ, don’t remind me. Seriously, I wish I didn’t have to, but we’re really hoping this makes a bit of money. Dad’s poetry brings in fuck all. I honestly have no idea what Mum is going to do. The cash won’t last another five years. Never marry a poet, Rachel.”

I couldn’t tell how much of it was an exaggeration. In my head, Deenie was rich. She was in her thirties and she had nice clothes and a nice house. Surely if her mother was broke, Deenie wouldn’t live so well. I didn’t understand, then, that having extra at the end of the month to spend on pastries and wine is not the same as having a mother who can retire. One was a matter of hundreds, and the other was thousands.

“How’s Carey?” she asked.

“Oh…I don’t know,” I replied, not wanting to talk about it. “If I’m honest, I think it’s over for good. Our lives are just in very different places.”

“That’s awful,” she said, and she sounded genuinely sympathetic. “I know you were mad about him. Are you okay? You look a bit…is heartbroken too presumptuous?”

“It’s not not accurate.”

There was a box of books on the kitchen table. Little Fire: A Response to the Poetry of Alistair Harrington.

(Years later, when Little Fires Everywhere came out, I wondered whether the sales of the poetry anthology went up. I checked Amazon; it is no longer in print.)

The book was beautifully made, olive green with reflective red foil flames. It was classy. Something you’d buy as a gift. There was a foreword written by Deenie, a dedication to her mother, and then thirty or so poems.

“It’s gorgeous,” I said admiringly.

“Look in the acknowledgements.”

There was effusive praise to the poets, the people who managed the estate, the publishing house, the Harrington family. And then, a few lines from the end:


To Rachel Murray, who helped police the vibe.



I smiled at her. “Thank you. I did police the vibe, didn’t I?”

She nodded. “You’re going to have a huge career in publishing, babe. I can tell.”

The final line of the acknowledgements was apart from all the others.


To Fred, the Bill to my Grover: thank you. For everything.



“Who are Bill and Grover?”

“Oh, God.” Deenie looked embarrassed. “Bill Withers and Grover Washington?”