You Are Someone I Used To Know
He finds her by the grave solemn and still, everything he can't bear her to be. He had come on instinct knowing without a doubt where she would be when he'd lost her in the slow monotonous waves of black drenched mourners and well wishers.
He thought that maybe he was drowning at the wake, with a generous serving of whiskey clenched in his fingers like a traitorous saviour. But its here that he really can't breath. He had not wanted to return to his brothers fresh grave so soon, a big part of him never wants to return.
The sight of the cold grave stone against the tastefully expensive floral tributes only test his patience and smell of earth and well maintained grass makes his stomach burn. He wants to be bitter and to lash out and hurt others like he hurts. He is almost ashamed that he already knows that he won't do those things.
He never had the luxury of indulgent brooding like his brother always did, especially now when his little sister was almost in permeate tears and his parents seemed to cling to him as if they expected their last son to suddenly fade into nothingness. He had to be strong for them. He could not add to the upset with his nephew sat quietly in the corner all alone trying not to be devastated, trying not to think about how everyone leaves him. And he especially can't abandon her, his widowed sister in law who couldn't seem to summon up the courage for any lasting mood except distancing coldness. He thinks that he has caught her a few times balancing vicariously on the edge of hysteria but so far she's always pulled herself back with the elegance of a tightrope walker. It makes him uneasy.
The sun shines with crisp brightness illuminating every grand detail of the burial plot till it hurts his eyes. However it was deceivingly cold. The wind was strong and bitter and so appropriate.
He feels suddenly awake and glad he wore his wool suite coat against the bracing weather. Before he left the wake he felt like he was sleepwalking only to be jolted awake by his mother snapping at her daughter in laws absence. At first he had felt worried and then he remembered only being able to feel concerned for the fuzzy dry feeling of his mouth and teeth. It felt worst than after even his worst drinking sessions and he had felt compelled to dig out his over night bag and rifle through his toiletries till he found his toothbrush. Now his teeth felt smooth against his tongue but his mouth was still haunted by the bitterness of alcohol.
And he really shouldn't have driven back to this place but he had wanted so badly to tempt fate. Because maybe this was karma and he deserved his end just as much as Paul did.
She does not acknowledge him as he approaches her hesitantly. She sits by the buried remains of her husband looking uncharacteristically small and defeated. With her back to him he can not tell what she was thinking so he settled for watching the wind blow her tousled hair across her tense shoulders. The brilliance of the sun catching hints of red within the dark waves.
He does not have any appropriate words to offer as a greeting, custom and politeness suddenly seeming so small and pointless. So instead he plants himself on the ground next to her. She does not flinch or even move and although it pains him he does not feel like he was intruding. He takes a long moment to arrange his legs in a way that did not make his knees ache and to breathe in the sight of her, still unable to look at his brother's grave directly.
Her profile is unreadable except for a telling tightness pitching at the corners of her full lips. A sudden impulse makes him want to touch them but he does not have the energy to understand why or to lift the heavy weight of his arm. The grass is a little damp through his trousers even though he has yet to see rain in Ireland. He would almost welcome it.
"There's a lot of people back there that wanted to offer you their condolences." He starts a little awkwardly as he stares at her knees and the grass stains on her dark tights. Her simple black dress sitting high on her thighs with her legs folded underneath her. Her stilettos sit empty by her other side and he wants to dress her to her normal level of perfection so she would not look so lost and his heart would not ache so much for her.
"No one seemed to notice me leave, but then, I really wouldn't have noticed even if they did." Her voice croaks a little from lack of use but he is just glad to end her spell of silence even if she still stares unseeingly straight ahead.
And then she turns, eyes a startlingly serious dark green and he has been pulled into her weighted orbit with no hope of breaking away. "I hope Helen wasn't too angry."
She does not mean her words as much as he meant his. He had just lost the brother he idolised after finding out he wasn't the man he seemed to be. It did not matter what others thought or said, they had no idea how that much loss felt, no one did, but her. Her tone was too flat, lacking the normal sharpness of her wit.
"Dad's looking after her." He hated seeing his mother cry, it somehow symbolised everything that was so wrong with the world. And yet he could not look away as his father, unusually grave, gathered the weeping women silently into his arms. He had just stood there thinking that his brother would have known how to make it all better while all they can do is say things they don't mean.
She makes a little whiney noise in the back of her throat like a wounded animal but places a hand tightly over her mouth to stop anything else escaping. Her eyes turn wide and glassy as they focus on her husband's grave.
"Its okay you know." His fingers curl into the grass, soil catching under his nails.
She doesn't respond again, back to being small and folded up on her self as she struggled to keep so much inside.
He breathes deeply before risking trying again. Every word is like a dull blade to his heart. He wishes he was stronger, wishes he was not afraid.
"Its okay to cry or be angry or to say whatever you're holding on to…shit." He curses how he can not say the words he has in his head. His tongue is thick and stumbles over the ones he can speak.
He has seen her drunken bitterness and her distancing sarcasm after watching the life finally leave his brother but since boarding the plane to Ireland she had been unnervingly silent. He had sat next to her on the plane and tried to touch her hand but her face had twisted into a scowl before pulling away.
For the longest time there is nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees and the birds overhead.
"You're not crying either." It takes a while for her quiet accusation to form meaning within his find.
"I want to be there for mum and dad, for Ryan." He admits but the truth is if he starts to breakdown he is not sure he can put himself together again. He is unsure what to do with so much anger. Maybe he had always been too sheltered but he has never felt so betrayed.
This time a fully formed sob escapes her body and tears start to spill over the sharpness of her cheekbones. "And who is going to be there for me?"
His heart breaks a little more. "Car…" He starts only to trail off as she interrupts, furiously whipping the tears from her cheeks.
"Forget it Liam. I'm being stupid and pathetic. It's just that, I lost my husband. A man I may have never actually truly known and at the same time… I think I've lost my family. I think I've lost everything." She bites into the fullness of her bottom lip as if to punish herself for speaking.
"Oh Carla." She leaves him speechless and all he can think to do is to lay a cold hand on her shoulder and pull her so that she leant against his side.
She tenses for awhile and then she relaxes against him but she does not melt into his awkward hug.
"You lot only put up with me because of Paul. Your mother never wanted him to marry me; Chelle hates me most of the time and let's not bother even mentioning my mother." She sounded bitter, her voice muffled by his coat but mostly she sounded afraid.
"You daft cow. You will always be family with or without Paul." He can't help but smile sadly down at her. She somehow seemed so devastated and yet somehow also embarrassed and annoyed at his insult.
She finds his hand and squeezes briefly before letting go. A small show of affection and he thinks he understands, maybe he always has.
"I just feel so empty. Like his hollowed me out and taken my insides down that bloody hole with him." She gestures to the grave in front of her and he can't help but grimes like a girl. "I'm pissed that he did this and refused to face up to the consequences. It always has to be us lot in the wrong not him. And sometimes I forget to be sad, and then I remember and that makes me feel guilty and sad…I'm not making any sense."
"I think I understand." He rests his cheek against the darkness of her soft hair. Somehow she manages to partially articulate his own confusion and for once she accepts that he understands without a denial or sarcasm. And suddenly he does not feel quite so alone and breathing becomes a little easier.
"Have you ever thought how you would kill yourself Liam?" She asks in such a calm voice he jolts back from her in shock.
He turns to look at her panic bubbling inside his chest. He can't loose her so soon after losing his brother; he wouldn't let her leave him. And yet her face was calm and serene even as her tears dried against her cheeks.
"Its daft and romantic but I always thought I'd swallow a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of red and just drift off into sleep. I thought maybe I'd jump of a bridge and drown myself but we both know I'd still want to look pretty after." She stops to take a steadying breath and he wants to shut her up because she's horrifying him. He wants to pin her in his arms because he never considered he would have to keep her safe from herself.
"I thought that when the love of you life is taken from you it would be unbearable. And it is, it hurts so damn much. But I always thought it would be like the movies and with him gone I would want to go with him."
"But you don't…you don't feel like that." He stumbles over the words unsure to what she is saying. His heart thumps against his ribs and he is deathly afraid by whatever goes on in that head of hers.
She shakes her head and frowns a little as she considers her answer. "I don't feel like that. But I wonder if I'm devastated because he died or because he betrayed me. And then I think that I should have loved him more."
"It was him that was wrong Carla. He loved you and you loved him it is as simple as that." He makes sure he holds eye contact more serious than he ever thinks he could be.
She looks down at her fingers as they twist together on her lap and when she looks up again she does not even try to hide her tears. She refuses to look at him and focuses on a spot just over his shoulder.
"Then why was it not enough?" He hates his brother for doing this to such a proud and confident woman. As much as sometimes he wants to strangle her he is more afraid to see her without her playful arrogance.
"I don't know sweetheart. I don't know." He wants to hug her again but knows that she would not want him to make her feel any weaker than she already feels. So instead he takes her hand and thinks that it is enough for now. They both hurt and they both lack answers but at least they are not alone.