The Year I Met You

The season between summer and winter, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere usually the months of September, October and November.

A period of maturity.

27

Monday, you and I sit in a row on a couch, eating Stroopwafels, in Dr J’s immaculately kept living room that smells like basil and lemons due to the row of basil plants lining the windowsill and the lemon tree in the corner catching the sun. The dog lies in the sun lazily looking at us with bored eyes. This is not the first time we have all been here, in fact it is the third Saturday in a row that we have been present in his interviews for companionship for Christmas Day.

We haven’t been so cruel as to not invite him ourselves. You were the first to ask him, albeit because you are trying to earn brownie points from Amy who is still holding out on you, waiting for a sign that you are making an effort, that you are a changed man, that you have indeed got your act together. This note she wrote, incidentally, instead of disheartening you as I thought it would do, actually gave you hope. Apparently it is a note that she’d written a few times before in stages of your life together, one being when you tried to propose to her three times but chickened out. You see her note as an intervention, a kind of a circle of support for your marriage. You read between the sparse lines that there’s a hidden clue meaning she will in fact come back to you, but it is August and there is still no great communication between you. You thought she would think of the Dr Jameson invitation as proof of how you have changed, instead she saw your kindness as thoughtlessness, the failure to put your family first as per usual, always thinking about your own needs, a sign that you didn’t want to be with her for Christmas Day. She had a fine list of things to say, I heard her shouting it at you one night, another night when Corporate Man knew better than to complain. I’m sure Dr Jameson heard too, which made your offer all the easier, and awkward, to turn down. For his closest friend and neighbour on the street not to be able to invite him to dinner on Christmas Day must have been a further blow to him and I see that he looks older all of a sudden, more tired, though he is trying to appear as though he is enjoying it all.

‘At least she’s talking to him,’ Monday had said as we’d both lain awake in bed listening to you argue outside at the garden table, thinking in our new early relationship smugness that we could never possibly speak to each other like that.

But it was bad timing when you’d broached the subject, your antics at the radio awards had hit the news again and you had scuppered any chance for a big job that you’d been hoping for on the few rival stations that would consider you. You are too much of a risk. Instead of what you’d been hoping for, you’d been offered a job on a lesser known local radio station, transmitting in Dublin only, but at least it’s your own show, The Matt Marshall Show noon to three p.m. talking about issues of the day. You will have to be on your best behaviour. You started two weeks ago, and you have kindly arranged for Heather to work in your office one day every week, something we discussed when you attended Heather’s circle of support. The new show means you have taken an enormous pay cut and don’t have the same team around you that you once had, so you’ve gone back to basics and Amy is going back to work, but I think despite being pushed into it, the change will be good for both of you. I would know.

I have tuned right out of what the young woman before me is saying. To say she is a New Age hippy would be rude and dismissive, but she is currently living in a tree trying to stop developers demolishing it because it’s the habitat of a rare breed of snail. I admire her strong beliefs: the snails need people like her to protect them from people like me, but in doing so she’s preventing the developers from getting on with a badly needed new children’s hospital. I wish people would fight as hard for the children as they would the snails. I don’t think Dr Jameson is as empathetic about the snails as she hopes he’d be: they ate the lettuce on his garden plot. This is not why I can’t concentrate, it is Monday next to me, so close I can feel the heat through his T-shirt which is soft and thin and almost see-through. I glance down and to the left and spy nipple. He catches me and gives me a look that I know well now, full of longing, and I think what a waste to waste it. He rubs the palm of my hand with his thumb, just once, then back again and that’s enough. I want him. He looks at me, as if he wants me now, here. I almost would if I didn’t think you’d commentate throughout the entire event.

It’s September and it’s muggy outside, heavy, as though we’re about to have a thunderstorm; headache-inducing weather, the kind that drives animals – and you – crazy. I hope it rains because my garden needs watering. Across the road, Mr Malone sits alone in the garden chair, a cup of tea in his hands that’s been there for the past hour. If he didn’t occasionally blink I would think that he’s dead, but he’s like that most days since Mrs Malone died, a second stroke taking her life three weeks ago. I picture her weeding in the garden, on her hands and knees in her tweed skirt, then I picture her how she was after the stroke, sitting in the garden with Mr Malone reading to her, and now I see nothing, just him alone and it makes my eyes fill.

Monday looks at me again, concerned, and gives my hand a squeeze and my desire for him is increased even more. He hasn’t officially moved in with me, but he may as well, he stays with me most nights, even has his own section of the wardrobe and his toothbrush and shaving tools sitting beside mine. On the nights he doesn’t stay with me – when we tell each other we should slow down, see our friends, spend nights apart – it’s torture, I look at these things and wish he was with me. He has a dog, Madra, a blond Labrador who acts like he owns the place, who has taken over my favourite armchair, which is fine with me now that I lie with Monday on the couch, and he even stays with me the nights Monday doesn’t, which kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Sometimes you still need me at night, but nothing like before. Some nights I look out the window and hope to hear the sound of your jeep racing down the street with Guns N’ Roses blaring, but nothing like before.

I asked Dr Jameson to join me for Christmas Day, though if he could take my place while I stay home he would be most welcome, as Christmas Day is to be spent with Monday’s eccentric mother in Connemara and Stephen’s Day in Dublin with my family. We had a meeting this week to discuss how Heather would like to cook the Christmas dinner as it will be the first time Jonathan will join us. We are both going to attend a cooking course together to learn how to make the perfect Christmas dinner. Neither Monday nor I are particularly looking forward to any part of Christmas. If I could have Heather all to myself, that of course would be a dream, but I can’t. Dr Jameson has reminded us that family hassle is better than being alone. Seeing what he is going through just for a bit of company on a day so many people claim to want to be alone, I tend to agree.

‘Okay,’ you clap your hands once, loudly, while she is mid-sentence, unable to take any more of her chatter. Monday and I jump, we were so much in our own worlds. ‘I think that’s enough of that,’ you say, and Monday laughs.

The lady looks at you, horrified and insulted, and I soften the blow by being polite as I show her to the door.

‘Well, what do you think?’ I ask, when I return.

Dr Jameson looks at me. ‘I think… she smelled of moss.’

Monday laughs again. He does that a lot and doesn’t think we notice, like we’re a bunch of weirdos on TV and he’s observing us and comes along for the ride. He forgets that we can actually see him.

‘Well, there’s one more to go,’ I say, trying to perk everyone up. Dr Jameson seems more down today than ever.

‘No. That’s enough,’ he says softly, to himself. ‘That’s enough.’ He stands and makes his way to the phone in the kitchen. The house isn’t open-plan like yours or mine, it is in its original seventies state, with the original tiles and what looks like the original wallpaper.

‘Don’t cancel,’ I say, as he picks up the receiver and searches a little notepad for the number.

‘What’s her name?’ he asks, searching through the names and numbers. ‘Rita? No, Renagh. Or is it Elaine? I can’t remember.’ He flicks through the pages. ‘There’s been so many.’

‘It’s almost three, Dr J, she’ll be here soon. She’ll have already left, you can’t cancel.’

‘Car’s here,’ Monday says from the other room.

Dr Jameson sighs wearily and closes the notepad. I can tell he’s given up and it breaks my heart. He takes his glasses off and lets them hang on the chain around his neck. We all go to the living-room window as we have done for all of his visitors and we watch. A small yellow Mini Cooper is parked outside. An elderly lady in a pale lilac cashmere hat and cardigan stares ahead. She’s big and cuddly and looks like a teddy bear.

‘Olive,’ he says suddenly, the weariness gone from his voice and a lightness in its place. ‘That’s her name.’

I look at him, trying to hide my smile.

Olive looks at the house, then she starts up the engine.

‘She’s leaving,’ Monday says.

‘No she’s not,’ you say after a few seconds when she hasn’t moved.

‘She’s just sitting there,’ I say.

‘Looks like she’s getting cold feet. If we leave her for a moment, she’ll probably get scared and drive away,’ you say. ‘That will sort it for you.’

Dr Jameson watches her for a moment, then without a word he leaves us. We watch him walk down his garden path and approach the car.

‘He’s going to tell her to fuck off,’ you say. ‘Watch.’

I sigh. Your humour is deliberately inappropriate and though I am used to you and your nuances, I still find you tiring.

Dr Jameson goes round to Olive’s window and raps on it lightly. He gives her a sweet welcoming, encouraging smile, a soft look I’ve never seen him give anyone before. She looks at him, her hands wrapped around the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white. I watch her grip loosen as she studies him, then the engine is killed.

‘I think we should leave these two alone,’ I say, and you and Monday look at me, confused. ‘Come on.’ As I drag the pair of you down the driveway, Dr Jameson offers no objection to us leaving. He waves us off cheerfully as he guides her into the house. It makes me smile to see that you’re a little hurt by this.

Later that day I slide into a chair beside my dad in our local community hall to watch Heather receive her orange belt in Taekwondo. The orange belt signifies that the sun is beginning to rise and, as with the morning’s dawn, only the beauty of the sunrise is seen rather than the immense power. This means the beginner student sees the beauty of the art of Taekwondo but has not yet experienced the power of the technique. I feel like I deserve a belt too.

Zara is sitting on Leilah’s knee on the other side of Dad, so for once we don’t have her acting as the bridge between us.

Heather sees me, lights up with excitement and waves. She never seems nervous about life’s challenges, she sees them as an adventure, most of the time she creates them herself, which couldn’t be more inspiring.

‘Dad,’ I say. ‘About the job…’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Well, I wanted to thank you.’

‘I didn’t do anything. It’s gone. Someone else got it.’

‘I heard. But thanks. For thinking that I’d be able to do it.’

He looks at me like I’m daft. ‘Of course you’d be able to do it. And you’d probably do a better job than the fella they hired. But you didn’t bloody bother going to the interview. Sound familiar?’

I smile to myself. That’s the biggest compliment he’s ever given me.

Heather starts her display.

‘Come to think of it, I found this-’ he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a photo, slightly creased at the corners from where it’s been shoved into his pocket and moulded into shape by his arse. ‘I was looking at some old photos of Zara and came across this. Thought you’d like it.’

It’s a photograph of me and Granddad Adalbert Mary. I’m planting seeds, concentrating hard, neither of us looking at the camera, in his back garden. I must be four years old. On the back in my mum’s handwriting it says, Dad and Jasmine, planting sunflowers 4 June 1984.

‘Thank you,’ I whisper, a lump in my throat, and Dad looks away, uncomfortable with my sudden emotion. Leilah tosses a tissue across to me, looking pleased, and I watch as Heather begins her display.

When I go home I frame the photo and add it to my kitchen wall of memories. A captured time when Mum was alive, when Granddad Adalbert Mary hadn’t been planted in the ground and when I hadn’t known I was going to die.

28

My garden in November is not necessarily dull. There isn’t an abundance of flowers but I have a variety of herbaceous shrubs with colourful bark to make it more interesting. My winter jasmine, winter-flowering heather, evergreen shrubs and an elegant feathery grass that billows in the slightest breeze adds movement, bright-red berries bring colour and Mr Malone’s honeysuckle is fragrant and colourful. The autumn gales have started to blow and there is high rainfall, so I spend most days raking up fallen leaves which I then use to make leaf mould. I clean my garden equipment and I store it all away for the winter, feeling my chest tighten as I do so, and I tie in my climbers to protect them from the winds. My November project is to plant bare-rooted roses and my research into how to go about this has amused Monday no end. It is a serious subject.

‘They’re only roses,’ Monday said, but they’re not only anything. And I told him exactly why this was so, and he listened, because he always listens, and when I was finished he kissed me and told me, for the first time, that is exactly why he is in love with me. And now roses remind me of his love for me.

But roses, like you and I, have their issues. Roses planted in soil that has grown roses for a number of years are prone to a disease known as rose sickness. If you plant new roses in this situation you must take out as much of the old soil as possible and replace it with fresh soil from another part of the garden which hasn’t grown roses before. This makes me think of Mr Malone, trying to grow in exactly the same place as his wife has died. It makes me think of anyone who is trying to grow where something, even a part of themselves, has died. We all experience that sickness. It is better to move, uproot ourselves and start afresh; then we will flourish.

I awake one November morning to the sound of dragging coming from outside – a familiar sound, like a screeching of nails on blackboard – and I leap out of bed. It brings me back, magically transports me to another time in my life. I move away from Monday’s arm, which earlier in the night was protective but now feels heavy and dead across my chest, and I slip out of bed. I look out of the window and I see you, pulling the garden table across the drive.

My heart skips a beat, my stomach does an unusual flip, not of excitement but of sorrow and loss, unable and unprepared to move on, to accept change or say goodbye. Instant grief. I can’t watch you do this. I throw on a tracksuit and hurry outside. I must help you do this. I grab one end of the table and you look up at me. You smile.

Corporate Man speeds by. We both take a hand off the table to wave. He doesn’t register us. We laugh and continue. We don’t speak, yet we work together well, manoeuvring the heavy table around the side of the house and into the back garden. It almost feels like a removal, as though we’re carrying the coffin of a dear friend. We do it together and I feel a lump in my throat.

We place the table down in the back garden, on the patio area outside the kitchen and we replace the chairs that you have already carried around.

‘Amy’s coming back,’ you say.

‘That’s terrific news,’ I finally say, surprised I’ve managed to push sound past the lump in my throat.

‘Yeah, it is,’ you say, but you don’t look so happy. ‘I can’t mess this up.’

‘You won’t.’

‘Don’t let me.’

‘I won’t,’ I say, touched by the responsibility you have entrusted me with.

You nod and we make our way around to the front garden. Fionn is sitting inside the car messing with the stereo, changing stations to find a song he wants.

‘You fixed it.’

‘It wasn’t broken,’ you say, confused.

‘But you said… Never mind.’

The penny drops as you realise your earlier lie has been caught out. ‘The Guns N’ Roses song.’ You sigh. ‘My dad used to hit my mum and me. The day we finally got rid of him, the day I finally faced up to him, me and Mum turned “Paradise City” as high as it could go and we danced around the kitchen together. I’ve never seen her so happy.’

Your freedom song. I knew it meant something, I wanted it to mean something on those cold dark nights when you came catapulting down the road like you’d been away the longest time and couldn’t wait to get home to your family, but then always felt locked out even when you weren’t. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

‘Well, it beats “Love is a Battlefield”,’ you say. My mouth falls open. ‘What? You don’t think I can’t hear you blaring that thing every day. When your windows are open I can hear you, you know, and sometimes even see you with your hairbrush.’ You imitate me, doing a woeful eighties dance.

‘I do not sing into a hairbrush,’ I protest.

You’re smiling at me nervously and I realise this is just your attempt to move on from what you revealed to me, in the only way you know how.

‘It’s a deodorant bottle, I’ll have you know, and I’m an excellent lip-syncher.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ you laugh.

I look across at my house and I see Monday watching us from my bedroom window. He moves away when we catch him.

‘That’s going well,’ you say.

I nod. ‘Today’s the day,’ I say, and on his confused expression I explain: ‘My year’s up.’

You look taken aback, surprised. ‘Well. Fancy that.’

‘I thought maybe you knew, with the table.’

‘No. Just felt right.’ We both stare at the place the table used to be. The grass is flattened where the table legs used to stand. The soil shows through. You will have to re-seed.

‘Have you found anything yet?’ you ask.

‘No.’

‘You will.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve lost your confidence, but you’ll get it back,’ you say, reassuringly. And I know they’re not empty words because, of all people, you know.

‘Thanks.’

‘Well. It’s been an interesting year.’ You hold out your hand. I stare at it, take it, shake it once, then step closer for a hug.

We embrace, on the grass in the front garden, where the table used to be.

‘You never did tell me what I did wrong,’ you say gently, into my neck. ‘To make you so unhappy. But I think I know.’

I freeze, uncertain how to reply. It has been a long time since I’ve thought of you being that man, that man that I hated for so long. Neither of us move from the embrace, I think it’s easier for both of us not to have to look at each other. You speak into my neck, I can feel your hot breath on my skin.

‘It was your sister, wasn’t it?’

My heart pounds and I’m sure you can feel it. It gives me away.

‘I’m sorry.’

The apology shocks me at first, and then nothing. And I realise that’s not really what I needed. You spent the year showing me you are sorry, that you never meant it in the first place. It doesn’t matter any more. You’re forgiven. I pull away from the embrace, kiss you on the forehead, then cross the road back to my house.

Madra is digging furiously in the garden, he and I clash on issues such as this. Monday is dressed and is standing at the open door. He waves at you, you wave back.

‘Madra!’ I shout. ‘No! Honey, how could you let him…? Oh, my flowers!’

He’s digging at the foot of the sign you bought for me, the one which says, Miracles only grow where you plant them and I fall to my knees to fix the mess, but as I do, my eye falls upon a box in the soil. A metal box, like a rusted treasure box.

‘What the…? Monday, look!’

I look up at Monday, expecting surprise, but he knows already. He’s smiling at me. He lowers himself to his knees and I think he’s going to help me tidy my flowers but instead he says, ‘Open it.’

And I do. And oh, do I do.

This year has been the metamorphosis of me. Not on the outside. On the outside I look the same, a little older perhaps. On the inside I have changed. I feel it. And it is like magic. My garden is the mirror of me. My garden that once looked barren and sterile is now full and blooming and ripe. It thrives and it prospers. Perhaps you could say the same of me. I lost something that I thought defined me and I felt like a shell of a person. Instead of trying to get it back, I had to figure out why I couldn’t be whole all by myself.

The world is fascinated by instant transformations, human makeovers or a magician’s sleight of hand hidden with a flourish. Quick as a snap, from there to here, blink and we’ve missed it. My shift wasn’t instant, and often the slow pace of change can be painful, lonely and confusing, but without us realising it happening, it happens. We look back and think ‘Who was that person?’ when during it all we think, ‘Who am I becoming?’ And at what exact point was it that we crossed over that line, when one version of us became the next? But it is thanks to the slowness that we remember the journey, we reserve the sense of where we were, where we are going and why. Destination completely unknown, we can value the crossing.

This wasn’t just my journey, this wasn’t just about me falling down and a man rescuing me, though I did trip and you fell and love did happen for me and was mended and repaired for you. This is about you and me, our fall and rise with the seasons, and about what happened when one door closed for both of us. I don’t know if I would be this woman now if it weren’t for you, and you may not even think you did anything. Most people in life don’t have to actively do anything to change us, they simply need to be. I reacted to you. You affected me. You helped me. You were the oddest friendship, the kindest loaned ear. You told me once during one of those long, dark, cold winter nights at the garden table, though you were embarrassed to say it and probably too drunk to remember it now, that you were locked out in the cold and I let you in time and time again. I had a simple reply at the time, but didn’t realise the true meaning of my words – you gave me your key.

I think you did the same for me.

I helped you help me, you helped me to help you, that’s the way it must be or the very idea of help would be obsolete. I always thought that being helped was a loss of control, but you must allow someone to help you, you must want someone to help you, and only then can the act begin.

The transformation from chrysalis can take weeks, months or even years – mine took one year. And although I have become this person, I’m still in the midst of a larger transformation, one that I won’t recognise until I look back at me now and say ‘Who was that girl?’ We are constantly evolving; I suppose I have always known that, but because I always knew that, I feared stopping, and it is ironic that it was only when I finally stopped that I moved the most. I know now that we never truly stop, our journey is never complete, because we will continue to flourish – just as when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.