I was shown to my new desk. There was a phone, a computer, and it had privacy partitions on each side. There was a stapled two-pager waiting on my chair, which I presumed would be an introduction to the company but was actually a script about blood cancer research.
“There’s great opportunity for advancement,” she said. “I’m on sixteen an hour, now.”
“Sixteen?”
“Well, I don’t just do phones. I’m management.”
“Sure, of course.”
“The important thing is to just keep people on the phone. If they’ve talked to you long enough, they’ll feel guilty. Ask them about their pets, their grandkids. Eventually they’ll agree to donate.”
“Right.”
“But don’t spend too long on, either. Some old grannies will chew your ear off. You have targets.”
“Right.”
As soon as I was on the phone, I felt myself becoming righteously angry with James. I was so obviously wrong for this job, and he was so obviously right for it. Who was better at convincing people than James? Meanwhile, he was continuing to work at O’Connor Books, despite the fact—and this last came in the bitchiest voice of all—that he didn’t even read real books. Just screenwriting manuals.
I called Carey on my lunch break. There was nowhere to eat your lunch, so I found a bit of grass next to a road and leaned on a fence there.
“Is it awful?”
“Dreadful. No one wants to talk to me.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Can you pay me thirteen quid an hour? Anyway. How’s home?”
“Mam’s in the hospital for the time being, and Dad’s hip is bad again, so I’m driving him to physio every other day. Only, he won’t do the stretches or anything, so I have to do them with him.”
I had wished for Carey to be stapled to the ground, and now he was nailed there good and fast. His life was steeped in chemo appointments, pick-ups, drop-offs, nieces, nephews, getting lunch on, getting dinner on, managing his sisters’ in-fighting, his mother’s depressions, his father’s stubborn refusal to move his leg clockwise and anti-clockwise in repeated, circular movements. My longing for Carey to become dependable had sprouted into him becoming absolutely reliable to everyone in the city of Derry, which was approximately three hundred miles away.
“You’re an amazing son,” I said to him. “And brother. And uncle.” I was about to add “and boyfriend,” but we were consciously avoiding titles. We knew we loved each other, but we didn’t know what to do with it, given the current circumstances, or what it meant. Neither of us knew how long this would go on for, and neither wanted to hold the other down.
“I’m not, really,” he replied. “Just paying back debts.”
Monkstown is closer to Douglas than the city centre is, so on the nights I was too tired from cold-calling, I would get off the bus early and go back to my family home, where it was dull and warm and full of food. I was hungry all the time now, taking my mother’s shepherd’s pie from the oven and eating it in bed with my laptop. Chris was almost never in. We had an unspoken agreement to not talk about the night he fell over my garden wall, although he still wore the jeans with the hole Carey cut in them. I saw a little bit of Kevin, who had yet to hit the growth spurt that Chris and I had at his age. He was slender and small and quiet, and Dad seemed constantly annoyed at him. Dad and I, on the other hand, had found a strange new equilibrium. We were both incredibly sad, and we didn’t want to be convinced out of that sadness, and so we sat together and silently watched films.
James rang me during one of me and Dad’s maudlin movie nights, fretting about when I was coming home.
“Where are you?” he whined on the phone. “This is the second night in a row you’ve been at your parents’。”
“It’s just easier. I’m so tired.”
“You’re always tired now,” he said grumpily. “I’m the one on my feet all day.”
I felt my eyes droop as we spoke. “It’s different on the phone. It’s tiring in a different way. It’s tiring on the soul.”
My dad nodded on the couch next to me, as if he agreed. He was soul-tired, too.
I finished one Friday at six o’clock, having somehow completed my impossible targets for the week, and found myself excited for the weekend in a way I hadn’t been in years. I left the office saying, “Thank God it’s Friday,” with an enthusiasm that felt so oddly overblown that it was camp. I caught myself: Who actually says that in real life? I got the bus to Shandon Street, clutching to the golden orb of the weekend, choking on the joy that I wouldn’t have to be back in Monkstown until noon on Monday.
I opened the front door and heard bodies. My first thought was that we were being robbed. I heard a falling against the table, the sound of something being shoved.
I didn’t know whether I had the energy for a robbery. What if I just turn around and leave?
“Rachel?” I heard James say. “Is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” I called.
“Give us a second.”
It was unusual for James to have a guest so early in the evening, but also fair enough. He probably wasn’t expecting me home for a few hours.
“Okay,” he said. “You can come in.”
James was scarlet in the face, still doing his belt buckle up. A plume of cigarette smoke came from the back kitchen door.
“How’ya, Rachel,” said Dr. Byrne.
“Hi…Dr. Byrne.”
I turned to James, aghast. “Were you guys just fucking on the table?”
James rubbed his chin. “Yes.”
“How long has this been going on again?”
“Um. A few weeks?”
Dr. Byrne came in from the yard, red-faced and smelling of smoke. I was too tired to put up with this shit any more. Too tired, too hungry, too sad.
“She’s going to find out eventually,” I snapped. “Why the fuck do you do this? Why can’t you just have respect for your wife, who loves you?”
“I love her,” he replied.
“And you think this is good enough?”
“Why are you so annoyed?” James asked. “You were fine with all this when it was getting you jobs.”
“Jobs!” I screeched. “Jobs! I had an internship! And I worked my ass off at it. For very few results.”
“Rachel…” Fred Byrne put his big hand on my shoulder.
“I was in your house less than three weeks ago. I saw you dance with Deenie in the kitchen. I’m her friend, now. And I care about her. It’s not fair.”
“No,” he reasoned. He sat down on the couch. “It’s not.”
A wave of sleepiness came over me again. He looked so comfortable, sitting on our couch. I sat next to him. “Sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I was sorry, just not in the mood for a confrontation, despite having started one. “I’m just tired.”
Dr. Byrne and I looked at each other. It was impossible to believe that he had once been my mysterious and beloved professor. Equally strange to think that he was the benevolent god who plied me with gin when I got fired. I felt now like we were two sad clowns in a nursery painting.