My Life in Shambles

The last cable snaps.

My heart plummets through my chest, striking my ribs, making me nearly double over in pain.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

“It’s over,” he says again with finality. “I’m sorry.”

He reaches over and presses the button for the nurse who comes in through the door seconds later. “I need to be alone,” he tells her, avoiding my eyes. “And I don’t want to see anyone else.”

The nurse nods and takes me by the arm to lead me out of the room because I’m dead on my feet.

All I can do is stare at Padraig through the tears.

Stare at the man I thought I knew.

The man I still love with all my heart.

And now I’m no longer the pulse of his.

22

Valerie

They say you can’t go home again.

It’s fucking true.

But here I am anyway, standing in the driveway to my parent’s house with my suitcase in my hand and wondering where the fuck everything went so wrong.

I sigh, wondering if I should do this. It’s not too late. I can just turn around and leave. I told my mother what happened with Padraig and I, and I know how disappointed she’s going to be to see me and the things that she’ll say. I don’t need to put up with that bullshit anymore.

But there’s nowhere else for me to go and in the haste of booking a plane ticket, I picked Philadelphia as the destination, not New York. Besides, Brielle’s couch has already been taken over by someone else.

In hindsight I could have picked Angie or Sandra but in my panic I picked home.

And yet, it’s not home.

My home is with Padraig.

And he’s across the ocean.

After he told me to go and I fled the hospital room in tears, Agnes pulled me aside and had a talking to me. I explained what happened and to my surprise, she said it would be best if I left. Not for forever, but just for a while, until Padraig gets back on track.

I told her I didn’t want to leave him like he is but she assured me she would take care of him, get Margaret to help if it came to that. Padraig would be fine.

“But you won’t be,” she said to me, holding my hand. “Listen to me child, I know I’m old but that only means I’m wise. He’s in a bitter place right now. I know my Padraig and I know his moods and I know where they come from and where they go and you’ve seen Colin’s temperament, you can only imagine how Padraig gets. I’m only thinking of you. Go back home, see your parents and your friends. Wrap up your life there and come back. We’ll take care of things on our end.”

She said that Padraig would only continue to hurt me if I stayed and that if I gave him space to come to terms with things, perhaps space to realize how much he wants and needs me there, that he’ll come around eventually.

“You can come back with a fresh start,” she said. “I’m sure Hemi can give you a ride up to Dublin and you can catch a flight out from there. Do you need money? I might be able to help with your ticket.”

Of course I didn’t accept her help. I still had money in my savings, almost all of it that I came to Ireland with, since staying at the B&B was cheap. I booked a flight out yesterday, somehow managed to pass out for the entire flight even though I was smushed like a sardine in economy, and now, well here I am.

But you can still leave, I tell myself. Call another Uber and go book a cheap hotel.

Before I can entertain that idea, the front door opens.

It’s my father.

“Valerie! What are you doing out there? It’s cold out, honey!”

I do have to say, the sight of my father makes me feel relief, like that feeling of crawling into your parents’ bed at night after a bad dream.

But this isn’t a bad dream.

This is very real.

I love Padraig with all my heart. I love him so much that it’s a wildfire that burns through my chest, creating new scars and new growth on the inside. I can’t temper these flames and the fact that I don’t have Padraig, that he told me to go and that I actually left, makes those flames char me to the bone.

What if I never go back?

What if he stops loving me?

What if this is a bad dream I can never wake up from?

By the time I reach the door, I’ve dropped the suitcase and collapsed into my father’s arms.

“Hey baby girl,” he says to me, holding me tight. “It’s okay. You can cry. You’re home now.”

But Padraig was my home. Shambles was my home.

“Let’s go inside, okay?” he says to me, pulling away and smoothing the hair on my head. “I’ll make some coffee and we’ll talk. Or not. Whatever you want.”

Somehow my dad has gotten even more loving while I was gone. It makes me realize how much I missed him, especially after what happened with Colin. Even though the reason why I’m here is horrible, at least this is giving me another chance to work things out with my parents.

Of course, once he leads me over to the couch in the spotless living room and sits me down, I’m reminded at how much easier it is to work things out with him versus my mother. Just looking around the room and how everything is so minimal and stark and clean with sharp lines, it’s such a contrast to Shambles, which, at times was in shambles a bit. Agnes had doilies everywhere and little ceramic knickknacks gathering dust on the shelves, and crooked frames that housed Padraig’s mom’s poems, and there were so many books everywhere. It was cozy chaos but it was warm and I loved it.

I’m about to ask where my mother is when she comes out from down the hall, fluffing up the ends of her hair. I have a feeling she made herself look nice just for me.

“Sweetheart,” she says to me, throwing her arms out.

“Hi mom,” I say, getting up and giving her a light hug and preparing for the worst.

“Let me look at you,” she says, holding me at arms-length and eying me up and down.

Yep. This is the worst.

“You look so tired,” she says, wincing.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “I just got off a plane. From Ireland.”

“Plus you must be so broken-hearted. Dave!” she yells into kitchen. “Do you have any wine? I think we need some wine.”

I shake my head. “No, I’ll pass out.”

Though not a bad idea.

“Fine, Dave, I need wine!” She gives me a tight smile. “It’s better for you not to drink wine anyway, so many empty calories.”

Whatever expression I had on my face falls and I shudder internally.

This again.

But this time, I don’t want to ignore it.

“Why are you so worried about calories?” I ask her pointedly.

She frowns, taken aback. “What do you mean? We should all be worried about calories.”

“But you’re not. You’re having wine and you don’t care.”

“I used to, when I was young, when I was your age,” she says stiffly. “And it’s only because of that that I can have what I want now. When you get older, things change. You’ll see. It’s not uncommon for women to find their ideal weight when they’re in their fifties and sixties. So don’t give up.”

Is she serious?

“Don’t give up?” I say. “Mom, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t count calories anymore. I watch what I eat in a roundabout way but if I want a cookie, I’m going to have a cookie. And I’m fine with that.”

“Irene, are you harping on your daughter again?” my dad shouts from the kitchen. “She’s going through heartbreak again, be nice to her.”

I raise my brows and look at my mom like, yeah be nice to me.

But my mother just raises her chin, right away going on the defense. “I am being nice. I care about you sweetheart, that’s all this is. I worry for you.”

“Why? I’m a size twelve! I’m not obese! And even if I was, who are you to say whether I’m healthy or not! I don’t have health problems other than the fact that I was hit by a truck when I was little and I had to learn how to walk again and I have scars and pins and rods all over my fucking body!”

She flinches like I’d slapped her. “You don’t need to yell. We all know what happened to you. But you can’t use that as an excuse.”

“An excuse for what?”

She throws her hands out. “I don’t know, this,” she says gesturing to me. My eyes go wide. “Whatever you’re doing that makes all these men leave you.”

I gasp.

NO.

“What did you just say?” I ask, the words coming out as sharp as daggers.

She swallows, hesitating. “Look, sweetie. I love you. But this is the second relationship in a row that you’ve let burn to the ground. What can I say? Both Cole and this Padraig fellow were rich, handsome and respectable men and both of those relationships ended. You’re obviously doing something wrong, something that puts them off. Sooooo … maybe it’s your weight.”

I can’t even believe it.

I should believe it, but I can’t.

The fucking nerve.

She goes on, “I mean, have you seen most women your age? They’re at the gym all the time. You never go. They watch what they eat. You never do. Now, I know you can’t wear high heels because of your feet, but you could try dressing a little sexier too. Don’t you see, there are ways to improve yourself? Just try them out for once and maybe you’ll be able to change. I believe in you. I believe that you can do it.” She smiles at me.

The worst part of this is that the smile is genuine.

She actually believes all this shit.

“I think I’m fine the way I am,” I say, my words barely audible, the anger rising up through me like molten lava.

“She’s fine the way she is, Irene,” my dad says harshly as he comes over.

She spots the wine and reaches for it but he holds it back. “I’m not giving you this until you apologize to your daughter,” he says, meaning business.