alexandra, gone Read online

  Kurt told his grandmother about his run-in with his mother, expressing how annoyed he was that she was punishing him for something he had done eight months previously. For once his grandmother was on his mother’s side; she felt that anyone who jumped out of a perfectly good plane deserved to be crippled for life. Having said that, she felt that Jane’s withdrawal of funds was an overreaction, bearing in mind what night it was.

  “How much do you need?” she asked.

  “Seventy?” Kurt said, knowing full well he was pressing his luck.

  “Fifty it is,” she responded.

  Rose took fifty euros out of her handbag and handed it to him.

  “Cheers, Gran!”

  She waved him away. He left the basement flat, and she watched him through her window as he turned on his iPod, searched for some noise, pressed Play, and walked down the street while probably deafening himself. Kids are mad, she thought. Then she picked up the open bottle of red wine that was resting against her chair. She drained her teacup of tea and poured in the wine. She took a sip and smiled. Happy New Year, Rose.

  4

  “So Far Gone”

  I’m so far gone that it seems like home to me.

  I’m so far gone, have I lost my way or am I free?

  Jack L, Universe

  It was just after eight thirty on New Year’s Eve when Leslie got off the train, returning from the family bungalow she owned in the country. Her apartment was located conveniently beside the train station, so she wheeled her suitcase past all those queuing for a taxi, turned the corner, and she was home.

  In the lift, she heard crashing and banging, and it became louder the closer she got to her floor. She exited and walked toward a bunch of five people whom she recognized as neighbors. They were blocking the way, so she mumbled “Excuse me.” They didn’t notice, as they were wrapped up in what was going on around the corner. It was then that Leslie noticed a fireman. He was standing in front of the group as though he was there to hold them back. Leslie couldn’t smell any fire. She said “Excuse me” again, but this time the banging was louder.

  One of the girls whom she recognized but didn’t know turned to her and looked her up and down. “Oh shit,” she said, “she’s here!”

  Leslie wasn’t one for pleasantries, but the girl’s response to her arrival was slightly shocking. The others turned and gaped at her. The fireman called to his buddies.

  “Lads, it’s a false alarm!”

  The gaping neighbors parted and she was allowed to walk through them with her case rolling behind her. She rounded the corner to be met by two firemen standing in the space where she used to have a front door.

  “What the hell?” she asked.

  “It’s my fault,” the girl who had uttered “shit” in response to her arrival said. “I haven’t heard your music in a few days, and there was a smell.”

  A fireman walked through the doorway. “Well, the good news is we have no dead body; the bad news is the cat has shit all over the place.”

  “I was down in the country,” Leslie said, a little shocked at the scene.

  “I’m really sorry,” the girl said, to the fireman as opposed to Leslie. “She rarely leaves the apartment,” she went on, her tone sliding from apologetic to accusatory, “and for the past few days no music, and then that awful smell.”

  “You smelled cat shit and you thought I was dead?” Leslie said in a voice that was laced with contempt and disbelief.

  The girl turned to face her with her hands raised in the air. “Look, I was just being a good neighbor. You hear about these people left to rot all the time, and to be fair I don’t know what death smells like.”

  “Well, it doesn’t smell like cat shit—and what do you mean ‘these people’?”

  “Well,” the girl said, becoming a little uncomfortable, “loners.”

  Leslie stood dumbfounded.

  “She thought you’d killed yourself,” a random man said.

  The girl nudged him and mouthed the words “shut” and “up.”

  “Well,” he said, directing his speech toward the firemen, “everyone knows that New Year’s Eve is a big night for suicides.”

  “Am I going to get charged for this call out?” the girl asked.

  “Don’t give them your name, Deborah!” the man said.

  “Brilliant, Damien,” she said, walking away and shaking her head. “Thanks for that.”

  The firemen gathered their gear; the five people disappeared.

  Leslie entered her doorless apartment and sat on her sofa, and her cat, who had apparently recovered from her gastrointestinal malady, jumped on her lap, and together they surveyed the pile of cat shit matted into her carpet near her electric fire. Then the realization of how she was perceived in her building hit Leslie like a ton of bricks. I’m the crazy loner cat lady who drops dead and rots in her apartment. The irony was not lost on her, as she had only recently rejoined the society she had shunned for so long.

  A mere two months before this night, Leslie had been sitting in a chair opposite her oncologist. He was the oncologist who had cared for her mother and both her sisters through their cancer. He had also been testing Leslie twice a year for more than twenty years. He was smiling.

  “Good news,” he said. “You are clean as a whistle.”

  “Right,” Leslie said. “Fine. Thanks.” She stood up to leave.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Apparently I’m clean as a whistle.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  She sat. “Well, would it be odd if I said I was?”

  “Very odd.”

  “I’m sick of waiting,” she said. “I’m sick of waiting for this stupid ticktocking time bomb to go off.”

  “Oh,” he said, and he nodded. “I see.”

  “The truth is, when Imelda died, I stopped living.” She hunched her shoulders. “Now I’m a woman about to turn forty with a cat for company. I thought I’d be well dead by now, yet here I am, alive and lonely.” She smiled at her doctor to assure him she wasn’t going to cry. He must have been shocked at her revelation, possibly the most she’d ever said to him.

  “You know that you might never get cancer,” he said. “But a lot has changed in recent years, and although I’m not a huge advocate of preventative surgery, I can give you some brochures.”

  She looked at him. “We talked about this years ago. You were adamant it was just self-mutilation.”

  “A lot has changed,” he repeated, “and, besides, I might have thought differently if I had known how you were feeling or if you’d given even the slightest indication of the effect this worry was having on your life.”

  “How could it not?” She stared at him and asked abruptly, “Are you talking about a double mastectomy?”

  “Yes. And in your case I’d recommend a full hysterectomy also, for peace of mind.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Jesus. Holy crap.” She nodded. “Give me the information.”

  This new prospect was daunting, but even as Leslie pulled out of the hospital car park she had made up her mind. I’m going to do it.

  It was around that time that Leslie had also decided she’d had enough of being lonely, and she had tentatively stepped back out into the world. As she was a Web designer who worked from home, she decided instead to rent an office in a building in town. She had yet to move on this, but the plan was in place. As she had no friends, she decided to visit museums and art galleries so that, even if she was alone, at least she would be outside and partaking in life.

  It would be a slow road back, but thanks to that night stuck in a lift, not as slow as she had first envisioned. Elle had become a fixture in her world over the past two months, and to a lesser extent Tom and Jane. She had created a website for Alexandra and was in contact with Tom with updates, and Jane filled her in on how the exhibition idea was coming along so that she could blog about it.

  But Elle wanted more than her help. Elle wanted her friends
hip, and although it was unnatural to Leslie to be a friend to a woman half her age, she had become fond of Elle early on.

  So the fact that she had so recently ventured back into the world and actually made friends meant that the comments from her annoying neighbor really bugged her.

  “I’m not a loner, Deborah!” she shouted at the wall. “I have friends. I go out. I have a life.”

  Someone coughed. It was the caretaker. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I was just talking to the wall.”

  “I’m here to fix the door.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Please forgive the smell. I’m about to clean.”

  “Will do,” he said, and he got to work.

  Much later and after a new door had been hastily fitted by the caretaker, Leslie poured a glass of wine, picked up her phone, and dialed a number she hadn’t dialed in over ten years.

  “Hello?”

  “Jim?”

  “This is Jim.”

  “Hi, it’s Leslie Sheehan.”

  “Leslie. Jesus. I can’t believe it’s you!”

  “I know. It’s odd. I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “No, I’m just sitting in.”

  “Me too.”

  “Happy New Year, by the way!”

  “Happy New Year.”

  “So what made you call after all this time?” he asked.

  “I don’t know …well, it sounds stupid.”

  “You’re sick?”

  “No, no, not sick,” she said. “I’m thinking about having preventative surgery, actually.”

  “I think you should,” he said without missing a beat.

  “Wow.”

  “If Imelda had had that choice I know she would have done it.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “No.”

  “Have you got anyone in your life?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to be there for you?”

  Leslie couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t spoken to Jim in so many years and before that she had usually been rude or standoffish.

  “That is really kind of you,” she said, “but no.”

  “So why have you called?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice,” she said, and she laughed a little. “People are mad, aren’t they?”

  Jim laughed. “Yes, Leslie, people are mad.”

  After that she asked him how he was and what he was doing and if he’d ever remarried. He was fine, doing well, and no, he hadn’t. He’d been seeing a Russian woman for a year, but she’d returned to Russia when her father died six months earlier.

  They spoke for about fifteen minutes, and before she hung up she promised to call him to arrange to go out for a drink.

  “You see, Deborah! I’m going out for a drink, with a man, very soon!” she shouted at the wall once more. “I am not Crazy Dead Cat Lady, not today and not tomorrow!”

  The cat stared at her from her freshly washed and pine-scented bed. Leslie looked at her watch. It was only nine, so she opened her computer and watched three episodes of Desperate Housewives season one before hitting the hay around eleven thirty.

  “Yeah, happy New Year, Deborah, and up yours!”

  Tom beeped the horn, and Jane appeared within seconds. She ignored her mother’s face pressed to the basement window when she turned to close the gate. Tom had gotten out and opened her door. She thanked him and buckled up while he made his way around to his side of the car. He got in and thanked her for agreeing to come to the Walshes with him, explaining how awkward it was since Alexandra disappeared. She wondered why he put himself through it, and he admitted to having a soft spot for Alexandra’s mother, Breda.

  They got to the house just after nine, and Alexandra’s younger sister, Kate, opened the door. She hugged Tom and said a polite hello to Jane. Kate vaguely remembered Jane. The last time she had seen her she had probably been no older than ten. They entered the hallway, and it was as though Jane had stepped back through time. The carpet was brown with red diamonds, the telephone table still had two yellow telephone books under it, and the walls were still dotted with holiday photos from the seventies and eighties and at least three of them included her. She was ushered quickly into the sitting room.

  There, sitting on the green velvet chair by the window, was Breda. The chair was the same, but Breda had aged well beyond her years. Having begun her family at a young age, Breda couldn’t have been any older than sixty-five, but she looked ninety. Her face was wizened and her tall frame shriveled. Her hair was white and cropped. Her hands, clasped and holding rosary beads, were so thin they were transparent, revealing blue and purple veins and knuckles that appeared knotted.

  She smiled and held out her hand. Jane took it and felt a little weak.

  “Jane Moore,” said Breda, shaking her head, “you’ve grown into such a beautiful woman.”

  “Thank you, Breda. It’s lovely to see you again.”

  “And Tom tells me you’ve been so good helping him find my Alexandra.”

  “I’m only setting up a benefit to highlight her case and the Missing of Ireland.” Jane was embarrassed and wished she was in a position to do more.

  “You were always such a lovely girl. Alexandra will be so pleased to have you in her life again.” She was crying, but her tears were silent.

  Jane noticed Eamonn enter the room from the corner of her eye, but Breda still had a firm grip on her hand, and she felt Breda deserved her full attention.

  “Still so blond,” said Breda, and she flipped some of Jane’s shoulder-length hair.

  “I have some help these days,” Jane said.

  “Do you remember Alexandra’s hair?”

  Jane nodded.

  “She had the richest chestnut hair, thick and glossy,” said her mother. “It was just above her shoulders when we saw her last, but the police say it could have changed now. I hope it hasn’t. She had the most beautiful hair.”

  “Mam,” Eamonn said, “Jane doesn’t want to hear that.”

  Jane turned to Eamonn and nodded hello. “It’s fine,” she said. “I understand.”

  Breda let go of Jane’s hand. “You should get a drink.” She looked at Tom, who was still standing at the door. “Tom, you should get Jane a drink.”

  Tom took Jane into the kitchen, where Kate and her husband, Owen, Eamonn’s wife, Frankie, and Alexandra’s father, Ben, were standing around the counter. Frankie welcomed Tom with a hug and Ben nodded to him. Kate offered him a drink, but Tom said he’d make it himself.

  Ben shook Jane’s hand and thanked her for coming. “It’s great to see you. How’s that boy of yours?”

  “He’s fine. He’s seventeen.”

  “My God, time passes quickly. It seems like only yesterday yourself and herself were giving us a run for our money.”

  Jane grinned. Although Ben was older than his wife, he still managed to look ten years younger. He sported a full head of gray hair and he rubbed at the gray stubble on his chin. He was heavier than he had been years before. She remembered him as being fit and sportive, but those days were long gone. His shirt buttons strained over his paunch, and when he’d approached her he walked with a limp.

  Some neighbors arrived and sat in the sitting room with Breda. The house seemed full and empty at the same time. Tom handed Jane a glass of red wine. Tony Bennett was playing on the stereo. No one talked about the fact that Alexandra was gone. They referred to her often and included her in stories about the past, which was where it seemed her parents now resided. Tom talked with his in-laws’ neighbors and Frankie and Owen, but it was difficult not to notice the coldness between him and Alexandra’s brother and father. He spent some time with Breda, who hugged him warmly and whispered something in his ear.

  Half an hour before midnight he found Jane in the hallway studying a picture on the wall.

  “That was taken on a day out in Bray in 1983,” she said. “It wa
s such a hot day, the beach was mobbed, and we’d run into the arcade and onto the bumper cars just to cool down. Alexandra ate so much cotton candy she puked pink all the way home.”

  Tom looked at the picture and recognized Jane. Her hair was so blond it was almost white, and it was braided to her waist. She was hugging Alexandra, whose rich, wavy chestnut hair shone in the sun. Both girls were facing the camera and grinning so hard they had dimples. He shook his head. “It’s a funny old world,” he said, but nobody was laughing.

  Midnight came and went and the new year was celebrated. As soon as the clock struck one, Tom and Jane made their excuses and left.

  In the car, Jane asked Tom about his relationship with Alexandra’s family.

  “Ben and Eamonn need someone to blame,” he said.

  “Why you?”

  “Why not me? She was my wife.”

  “And what about Breda?”

  “Breda blames herself.”

  “And you?”

  “It depends on the day.”

  When they got to Jane’s house, he thanked her once more for coming. “It meant so much to Breda.”

  She nodded and told him that she’d be in touch the following week with an update about the benefit. He nodded, and she got out of the car. She closed the gate behind her and waved, and she made her way up the steps of her house. She could hear Bing Crosby’s voice singing “You Are My Sunshine,” punctuated by laughter and chatter, coming from her mother’s basement flat. She didn’t stop to say hello. Instead she went inside, took off her shoes that were pretty but painful, poured herself a whiskey, and took it to bed.

  When the clock turned midnight Elle raised her bottle and toasted the sky. She spun around the beach in bare feet with a bottle of vodka pressed closely to her chest. When she stopped spinning, she fell on her ass, still managing to hold on to the bottle. She got up as quickly as a drunkard can and sprayed some alcohol on the fire so that the flames danced higher and higher. The car engine had already exploded, and so now she and a homeless man who called himself Buns watched the shell burn out. She sat beside the old man and clinked her bottle against his.