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Evermore will I chant of her wonder and how it wasmeshe chose to adore.
And yet, I’ll always want . . .
The paper bent over into its old shape like it knew Áine was finished reading.
A grim realisation came to her. Something not all that different to a jibe Fionn had made after checking in. When he’d said to her for her rude presumption, “I didn’t become stagnant for six years . . .” And from what she gathered over the night, he meant it.
Could she say the same? Beyond her average happiness, social life and goals, the only description for the state she’d cocooned herself these last few years was latent. In the subconscious pursuit to avoid being content, she’d made herself dormant until her return to college.
No wonder Fionn had asked her to come with him, she realised. Not as her saviour whisking her away from her shitty life but as her companion, there to balance her. To motivate her into doing something with her current life. To support her.
Áine hunched over the worktop and burst into loud, aching tears she’d been saving for the longest time, because the final question which came to her in all of this was even worse than the one associated with the impasse:
Did this realisation come too late?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dublin 2016
Fionn
Fionn’s hands were shaking and felt separate to his form as he rummaged through the few belongings in his bag, the only thing in the bedroom that indicated he’d been there at all. He decided he’d throw the bag away after landing in Perth. It was just another thing that would remind him of his old life that didn’t matter now great things were close. Beaches and his brother. His niece and a fresh start.
Zipping up the bag against the fight of its contents, he realised he might be reflexively forcing himself to stay positive to stabilise himself. The problem with this was that once Fionn realised he was doing this, it lost its effect. This trickery was over and the reveal killed the illusion.
He imagined what it would be like to be a magician who felt truly surprised every night they performed. What wondrous elation it would create in your aweing chest to be shocked that a rabbit jumped out of your hat over and over.
He imagined his version of that in a life with Áine. Living in the thrilling anticipation of whatever she’d think up next to make him discover something new about himself or her, or the world.
Now, however much he tried to think towards the future, it had become a future blatantly absent of her and the accompanying what-if.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and settled onto the nook of the window, forcing himself to stay this way; blank and rigid, right up until the moment orange light illuminated the room and dust spiralled amongst its thick air. Right up until he was sure Áine’s shift was over and he wouldn’t have to see her at checkout. Or so she wouldn’t have to see him.
Then he stood and turned off the light to begin his final Irish journey; the one to the airport.
Pacing down the hall for the staircase to reception, he decided to get his haircut in the duty-free. The thought kept his feet moving so he wondered if a man or woman would do it and how much it would cost. He wondered if he’d look better or worse with it. If his ears would look bigger in the mirror with the hair gone. If he’d have less about him to make the heteronormative devout complain, and in turn make them think that he was someone he wasn’t.
He grimaced at the idea of that and the accompanying thought concerning an older gentleman he’d met in rehab. Gentleman not because of nobility but because he was gentle-minded; patient with everything once sober. They were out in the orchard collecting apples for dessert when he had shown Fionn a picture from his wallet. It was more brown and yellow than black and white; a young boy about nine, freckled and looking somewhere off-camera as if he’d been pulled away from a street game of football for the shot.
A less intelligent person might have asked the gentleman if it was his father for how weathered life and the sun had touched face since. But Fionn was at least half intelligent, so he knew who it was; the man himself.
What made Fionn only the half in this circumstance was he’d failed to figure out the why. Why did he have a picture of himself in his wallet?
The gentleman had sat beneath a tree’s shade surrounded by the rotting apples nobody wanted. His sleeves were rolled, and his knees were drawn loose and high to rest his calloused hands on. Then he told Fionn, “People post pictures of themselves every day on that social media. Document their lives. And maybe what’s vanity to one person is pride to another. I don’t like to begrudge. All I know is I don’t have any family left. I didn’t have a child. I didn’t get fostered into a group of lifelong friends I’d get to call family in the place of a blood-related one. This picture is all I have of myself. And what’s more, I’m proud of myself then and I’m proud of myself now. That’s not to say pride can’t be corrosive, but we should be allowed to have it when it’s healthy. We should be allowed to want ourselves remembered without external contributions.”
What Fionn had taken from this conversation apart from pride’s corrosive potential was there wasn’t a soul in the world who had a picture of him in their wallet. Not one. And no one in Ireland ever would. That was certain. That was why he was going, or at least part of it. He had to believe he deserved to find a different kind of pride. One that didn’t entangle itself in reliance on vices.
Fionn descended the stairs toward the foyer, andsheimmediately came to mind yet again. He hoped she understood why he gave the poem to her.
In some way it had always been for her. He had wanted to prove to himself he was capable of writing well back then, and who better to determine that than Áine Meaher? The one who gave him the courage to write it.
As Fionn turned on the final step, his heart still sank to find the reception desk vacant.
A well began to coat his eyes and sink its claws into the back of his nose. He was no longer afraid of crying when others might see, but he also didn’t want it to happen when he was so close to his new life. Just a few more hours to get through and life would be better; it would begin.
Again, what pulled him from this mindset much faster than he’d hoped wasn’t the succulent waft of continental breakfast seeping from the dining room, but what it masked; the foyer’s musty stench he thought he might miss. Felt it in the way he might miss his dad; because they had the association to someone he adored. In the former, Áine, and in the latter his mother.
An elderly couple exiting the lift walked past, arm in arm, somehow solidifying the night was over. With this in mind, Fionn tapped the key card twice on the reception desk’s oak to thank it for what it had given him last night. A man who had the audacity to ask a woman to pick up her life, because he couldn’t bear the possibility of not seeing her every day for the rest of his life.
