Page 50 of Go Now
Flooded with relief, she opened the door to Marcus.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he said, filling the stuffy room with the fresh scent of rain and the city.
Kate ignored the comment – for now.She realised how grateful she was to see Marcus there: the sheer bulk of him, the big, creaking leather coat he wore for long drives, his kind eyes.
‘I was drifting off,’ she said.‘I think. It’s good to see you.’
He had a brown paper bag with him, it clinked as he put it down on the coffee table.
‘You want a Guinness?’
‘You know what?Yes, I do.’
There was something comforting about those cold, black bottles. When she was a girl, her dad would pour the contents into a glass, and let her sip the top. Actually, it had tasted revoltingly bitter to her back then, an affront to her child's palate, but she drank it anyway, feeling grown-up, privileged to be included in this Friday-night ritual.Now she savoured the sharpness and the cold, felt it cutting through the fuzz of fatigue.
‘Thanks for your messages,’ Marcus said, sitting in the chair.‘Sorry not to reply.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry, and you didn’t have to reply, either.I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.Sarah was, too.’
He nodded, taking a deep draught from the bottle.
‘Cheryl’s okay,’ he said, hoarsely.
‘I’m glad.What happened?’
‘She had to go to St.Joseph’s to get her test results.You know, for the biopsy. Her mom wanted to drive her, but she didn’t want her mom there.She didn’t think it would be fair on her if the news was bad.Cheryl’s mom’s lost a lot of people to cancer.So that’s… that’s why.’
He finished the bottle and opened another.
‘She got the all-clear, but she -’ His voice choked up, momentarily.‘Cheryl gave up booze. Five years in AA, this December. But you’re always just a minute away from another drink.That’s what they tell you in the program.’
As if to underline the point, he took another deep swig from the bottle.
‘She went and found the nearest bar.Got stinking drunk.Crashed the car.’
‘Jeez.Is she hurt?’
‘Cuts and bruises. Took out a bus-stop, thankfully with no people standing at it. Arrested for DUI.’
‘I bet that was the hangover from hell.’
Marcus gazed at her, open-mouthed.
‘I’m sorry.That was a stupid thing to say.Sorry.’
To her relief, Marcus laughed. ‘No, you’re right.She is feeling very sorry for herself.’
‘And what about… you two?’
'We're okay. The wedding's back on.Hopefully, they'll let her out of jail for the day.'
It was Kate’s turn to look shocked.
'I'm joking, Vee.She'll get a fine, probably a ban.It could be a year, which is going to make things real hard for work, but…' He shrugged.'Hey.No one's dead.No one's got cancer.I think, in a way, we kind of needed something to happen. Do you know what I mean?Not that it was a good thing, in any way, but it made us focus on what’s important.’
Kate nodded.It made sense, but at the same time, it reminded her how little she really understood.Once, at school, she'd wandered into a classroom, where some older students had been learning some very complex aspect of pure mathematics. She'd looked at the alien figures and symbols on the whiteboard and felt a kind of fear. She felt convinced that she'd never be as big as the kids who'd been in the room before her, and that she'd never be able to understand the stuff that was written on the board.
And that was how she felt about relationships.They were beyond her, they were pure mathematics.They were something for the bigger kids.
