Anybody Out There? (Walsh Family) Read online

  When the bar closed at 4 A.M., Aidan offered to walk me home, but it was too far. By about forty blocks.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I said.

  “Okay, we’ll get a cab. I’ll drop you off.”

  In the backseat, listening to the driver yelling in Russian on his cell phone, Aidan and I didn’t speak. I took a quick look at him, the lights and angular shadows of the city moving across his face, making it impossible to see his expression. I wondered what would happen next. One thing I knew: after the last knock-back, no way would I be offering business cards or convivial nights out.

  We pulled up at my crumbling stoop. “I live here.”

  Privacy would have been nice for our awkward “what happens now?” conversation, but we had to sit in the cab because if we got out without having paid, the cabdriver might have shot us.

  “Look…I guess you’re seeing other guys,” Aidan said.

  “I guess I am.”

  “Can you put me on your roster?”

  I thought about it. “I could do that.”

  I didn’t ask if he was seeing other women; it was none of my business (that’s what you had to say anyway). Besides, something in the way Leon and Dana had behaved with me—pleasant but not terribly interested, like they’d been introduced to a lot of girls by Aidan over the years—made me sure he was.

  “Can I have your number?” he asked.

  “I already gave you my number,” I said, and got out of the cab.

  If he wanted to see me that badly, he’d find me.

  9

  I woke up in the narrow bed in the sofa-filled front room and spent several dopey minutes trying to look out of the window. Here came the elderly woman and her dog; I watched sleepily. Then less sleepily. I half sat up: I wasn’t imagining it. That poor dog did not want to do its business but the woman was insistent. The dog kept trying to get up and leave but the woman wouldn’t let her. “Here!” I couldn’t hear it, but I could see her say it. Odd.

  Then in came Mum and I partook of a hearty breakfast—half a slice of toast, eleven grapes, eight pills, and a record-breaking sixty Rice Krispies—because I needed to convince her how well I was getting. While she was washing me—a miserable business with toweling cloths and a bowl of scummy lukewarm water—I went for it.

  “Mum, I’ve decided to go back to New York.”

  “Don’t be shagging well ridiculous.” She continued rinsing me.

  “My scars are healing, my knee can take weight, all the bruises are gone.”

  It was strange, really; I’d had myriad injuries, but none had been serious. Although my face had been black-and-blue, none of the bones had been broken. I could have been crushed like an eggshell and spent the rest of my life looking like a Cubist painting (as Helen had put it). I knew I’d been lucky.

  “And look how fast my fingernails are growing.” I wiggled my hand at her; I’d lost two fingernails and the pain had been—I’m not joking—indescribable, far worse than my broken arm. Even the morphine-based painkillers couldn’t entirely negate it; the pain was always there, just slightly further away, and I used to wake in the nighttime with my fingers throbbing so much they felt swollen to the size of pumpkins. Now they barely hurt.

  “You’ve a broken arm, missy. Broken in three places.”

  “But they were clean breaks and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’d say it’s nearly better.”

  “Oh, you’re a bone surgeon now, are you?”

  “No, I’m a beauty PR and they won’t keep my job open forever.” I let that thought settle with her, then I whispered darkly, “No more free makeup.”

  But not even that worked. “You’re going nowhere, missy.”

  However, I’d picked my time well: that very afternoon I had my weekly hospital checkup, and if the professionals said I was getting better, Mum wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

  After lots of hanging around, an X-ray was taken of my arm. As I’d thought, it was healing fast and well; the sling could be removed immediately and the plaster could come off in a couple of weeks.

  Then onto the skin specialist, who said I was doing so well that the stitches could be taken out of my cheek. Even I hadn’t expected that. It hurt more than I’d thought it would and an angry, red, puckered line ran from the corner of my eye to the corner of my mouth, but now that my face was no longer being held together by navy-blue thread, I looked far, far more normal.

  “What about plastic surgery?” Mum asked.

  “Eventually,” he said. “But not for a while. It’s always hard to tell how well these things will heal.”

  Then on to Dr. Chowdhury to have my internal organs poked and prodded. According to him, all the bruising and swelling had subsided and he said, like he’d said on the other visits, how unbelieveably fortunate I’d been not to have ruptured anything.

  “She’s talking about going back to New York,” Mum burst out. “Tell her she’s not well enough to travel.”

  “But she was well enough to travel home,” Dr. Chowdhury said, with undeniable truth.

  Mum stared at him, and even though she didn’t say it, not even under her breath, her “Fuck you, fuckhead” hung in the air.

  Mum and I drove home in grim silence. At least Mum did, my silence was happy and—I couldn’t help it—a little smug.

  “What about your gammy knee?” Mum said, suddenly animated: all was not lost. “How can you go to New York if you can’t climb a step?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “If I can walk to the top of the stairs on it, I’m well enough to go back.”

  She agreed because she thought I hadn’t a hope of doing it. But she had no idea how determined I was to leave. I would do it. And I did do it—even though it took over ten minutes and left me covered in sweat and a little puky from the pain.

  But what Mum was missing was that even if I hadn’t been able to get past the first step, I was leaving anyway. I needed to get back and I was starting to get panicky.

  “See?” I gasped, sitting down on the landing. “I’m all better. Arm, face, innards, knee—better!”

  “Anna,” she said, and I didn’t like her tone, it was so somber. “There’s more wrong with you than just physical injuries.”

  I processed that. “Mum, I know. But I have to go back. I have to. I’m not saying I’ll stay there forever. I might arrive back home very quickly, but I’ve no choice. I must go back.”

  Something in my voice convinced her because she seemed to deflate. “It’s the modern way, I suppose,” she said. “Getting closure.” Sadly, she went on, “In my day there was nothing at all wrong with unfinished business. You just left a place and never went back and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. And if you went a bit funny in the head and had nightmares and woke the whole house, running around in the middle of the night screeching your head off, the parish priest would be brought in to pray over you. Not that it ever helped, but no one minded, that’s just the way it was.”

  “Rachel will be in New York to help me,” I reassured her.

  “And maybe you’d think about going for some of that counseling stuff.”

  “Counseling?” I wondered if I was hearing right. Mum totally disapproved of any kind of psychotherapy. Nothing would convince her that therapists employed confidentiality. Although she had no proof, she insisted they regaled people at dinner parties with their clients’ secrets.

  “Yes, counseling. Rachel might be able to recommend someone for you.”

  “Mmm,” I said musingly, as if I was considering it, but I wasn’t. Talking about what had happened wouldn’t change a single thing.

  “Come on, we’d better tell your father what’s happening. He might cry, but ignore him.”

  Poor Dad. In a houseful of strong women, his opinion counted for nothing. We found him watching golf on telly.

  “We’ve a bit of news. Anna’s going back to New York for a while,” Mum said.

  He looked up, startled and upset. “Why?”


  “To get closure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t really know,” Mum admitted. “But apparently her life won’t be worth living without it.”

  “Isn’t it a bit soon to be leaving? What about the broken arm? And the gammy knee?”

  “All on the mend. And the sooner she gets this fecking closure, the sooner she’ll be back to us,” Mum said.

  Then it was time to tell Helen and she was quite distraught. “War crime!” She declared. “Don’t go.”

  “I have to.”

  “But I thought we could go into business together, you and me. We could be private investigators. Think of the laugh we’d have.”

  Think of the laugh she’d have, snuggled up in her nice warm dry bed while I loitered in damp shrubbery doing her job for her.

  “I’m more use to you as a beauty PR,” I said, and she seemed to buy that.

  So they sent for Rachel to bring me back.

  10

  While I waited to see if Aidan Maddox would find my number and ring me, I got on with my life. I had my hands full of speed-dating dates.

  However, Harris, the interesting architect, turned out to be a little too interesting when he suggested that, for our first date, we have a pedicure together. Nearly everyone shrieked that it was adorable, that it was original, and that he obviously wanted me to have a good time. But I had my misgivings. As for Jacqui, who had no time for that Feathery Strokery sort of nonsense, she nearly went through the roof.

  She threatened to walk past the salon and shame me; luckily she was working that evening, and when the time came and I was sitting beside Harris, the two of us like a king and queen, raised above the salon on matching thronelike padded seats, up to our ankles in little pools of soapy water, I’ve never been so glad.

  Two women bowed before us, tending to our feet. All I could see were the tops of their heads, and I was too ashamed to carry on a relaxed conversation in their abject, silent presence. Harris, however, seemed perfectly comfortable, asking away about my job, telling me all about his. Then he produced a cocktail shaker and two glasses, poured me a drink, and raised his glass. Christ, a toast! “To the Mets winning,” I said quickly.

  “To toe sucking,” he said.

  Oh no. Oh, dear me, no.

  So he had a foot thing. Which was fine. Fine. Not for me to judge. Just don’t include me in it.

  Not that he planned to. As soon as we’d finished and paid, he said to me, quite nicely, “We didn’t click. Have a good life.” Then briskly he strode away on his freshly buffed feet.

  Bloodied but unbowed, I prepared for my date the following evening with Greg, the baker from Queens. Although it was October and far from warm, he’d suggested a picnic in the park. I had to hand it to them, these New York guys had really raised their dating game.

  We were meeting straight after work because Greg went to bed very early on account of having to get up in the middle of the night to make bread. Also, after seven-thirty, it would be too dark to actually see each other and what we were eating. As I marched along to the park, I insisted that I felt hopeful. So this was a little unusual, but so what? Where was my sense of adventure?

  At the park, I saw Greg waiting with a rug over one arm, a wicker picnic basket on the other, and—with a thrill of horror—some sort of fool panama hat on his head.

  It’s a terrible thing to say but he was a lot fatter than I remembered from the speed dating. That night we’d been sitting down with a table between us and I only really saw his face and chest, which had been bulky but not noticeably tubby. But, seeing him at full height, he was…he was…diamond-shaped. His shoulders were normal size, but he really sort of exploded around the waist area. His stomach was massive—and although it kills me to say it because I hate when men say it about women—he had a ginormous arse. An arse you could play handball against. But curiously his legs weren’t too bad and sloped down to a pair of neat little ankles.

  He spread out the rug on the grass, then tapped his basket and said, “Anna, I promise you a feast of the senses.”

  Already I was afraid.

  Reclining on the rug, Greg opened his basket, took out a loaf, then closed the basket quickly, but not before I’d seen that all that was in it was loads of bread.

  “This is my sourdough,” he said. “Made to my own recipe.”

  He tore a bit off, in a real bon vivant’s way, and approached. I could see the way this was going: he was planning a seduction via bread—once I’d tried his creations, I’d go all swoony and fall in love with him. I was dealing with a man who’d seen Chocolat once too often.

  “Close your eyes and open your mouth.” Oh, cripes, he was going to feed me! God, how excruciating, how 9 1/2 Weeks.

  But he didn’t even let me eat the damn thing. He rubbed it around inside my mouth and said, “Feel the roughness of the crust on your tongue.” He moved it back and forth and I nodded yes, I was feeling the roughness.

  “Take your time,” he urged. “Savor it.”

  Oh God, this was a public place, I hoped no one was looking at us. I opened my eyes and shut them again quickly: a woman walking her dog was in fits. Her hands were on her knees, she was laughing so much.

  When Greg felt my tongue had been sufficiently cut to ribbons by the rough crust, he exclaimed, “Now taste! Taste the salt of the dough, the sourness of the yeast. You getting it?” I nodded yes, yes, saltiness, sourness. Anything to speed this up.

  “Taste anything else?” Greg asked.

  I couldn’t say I did.

  “A sweetness?” he prompted. I nodded obediently. Yes, a sweetness. Make this be over.

  “A citrus sweetness?” he said.

  “Yes,” I mumbled. “Lemon?”

  “Lime.” He sounded disappointed. “But close enough.”

  Next up was an aged-cheddar-and-red-onion focaccia, which I had to smell for about half an hour before I was permitted to eat any. Followed by a French yoke—perhaps a brioche—where I had to admire its many airholes, which apparently gave it its delicious lightness.

  The pièce de résistance was a chocolate bread, which he made me crumble, so that little nuggets of chocolate went all over my skirt and, despite the cold evening, managed to melt.

  Over the course of ninety long, chilly minutes, Greg made me lick bread, smell bread, watch bread, and caress bread. The only thing he didn’t make me do was listen to it.

  And there was nothing else to eat: no coleslaw, no chicken legs, no turkey slices.

  “We live in carb-phobic times,” Jacqui later remarked. “Does he know anything?”

  Bloodied but, at this stage, quite bowed, I was in no mood when, the following day, the cute bartender rang me at work and said, “Got a great idea for our date.”

  I listened in silence.

  “I’m part of a project where we build houses for some poor folks in Pennsylvania—they provide the materials, we provide the labor.”

  A pause for me to praise him. I didn’t. So, sounding a little confused, he continued: “Going down this weekend. Be great if you’d come along. We could really get to know each other and…you know…do some good for our fellowman.”

  Altruism: the latest fashion. I knew all about these projects. Basically a group of young New York pissheads descend on a poor rural community in Pennsylvania and insist on building some misfortunate bastards a house. The city folk have the time of their lives, running around, playing with power tools, and staying up all night, drinking beer round a campfire, then effing back to New York and their lovely level-floored apartments, leaving the poor rural community with a leaky, lopsided house, in which all furniture sits on a slope, and if something has wheels, it rolls across the floor until it bangs into the wall.

  “You gotta give something back” is the mantra of these guys. But what they really mean is “Ladies, see what a wonderful human being I am.” And sadly, many women fall for the ruse and sleep with them at the drop of a nail gun.

  Wearin
ess washed over me.

  “Thank you for asking,” I said. “But I don’t think so. Nice to meet you, Nash—”

  “Nush.”

  “—sorry, Nush. But I just don’t think it’s for me.”

  “Whatever. Got plenty of other chicks.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I wish you well.”

  I slammed the phone down and turned to Teenie at the next desk. “You know what? I’ve had it with New York men. They’re fucking lunatics! No wonder they have to go to speed dating, even in a city where women are crawling the walls with desperation for a date.”

  Teenie pursed her silver lips into a sympathetic moue. (She never wore normal-colored lipstick; unlike me, kookiness came naturally to her, she was kooky to the bone. Despite this we were great pals, she was my favorite of all the McArthur staff.)

  “Whoever heard of going on a date and building a house? A fucking house—”

  The phone rang, interrupting my rant; I took a deep raggedy breath and said, “Candy Grrrl publicity, Anna Walsh speaking.”

  “Hey, Anna Walsh, it’s Aidan Maddox speaking.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Are you calling to ask me out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad timing. I’ve just sworn off New York men.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I’m from Boston. So what’s going on?”

  “I’ve had the weirdest week, with the weirdest dates. I don’t think I can take another one.”

  “Date? Or weird date?”

  I thought about it. “Weird date.”

  “O-kay. How about we go for one drink? Is that unweird enough?”

  “Depends. Where are we having it? A beauty salon? A freezing park? The surface of the moon?”

  “I was thinking more of a bar.”

  “Okay. One drink.”

  “And if, by the end of the drink, it’s not working out for you, just say you’ve got to go because there’s a leak in your apartment and the plumber is coming. How does that sound?”