I don’t want to give the impression that my life was blighted by what happened at Knocknaree, that I drifted through twenty years as some kind of tragic figure with a haunted past, smiling sadly at the world from behind a bittersweet veil of cigarette smoke and memories.
We had been so small, so recklessly sure that together we could defy all the dark uncomplicated threats of the adult world, rust straight through them like a game of Red Rover, laughing and away.
The tricky shiver in the air was a reminder: everything you believe is up for grabs, every ground rule can change on a moment’s whim, and the dealer always, always wins.
It was such a pathetic little story, a snip of nothing, the kind teenage girls fight over and forget every day. It had led us to this week and this room.
That evening was one of the reasons it had never occurred to me that Rosie could be dead. The blaze of her, when she was that angry: you could have lit a match by touching it to her skin, you could have lit up Christmas trees, you could have seen her from space. For all that to have vanished into nothing, gone for good, was unthinkable.
I leaned my arms on the Ha’penny Bridge where people used to pay half a penny to cross the Liffey, I looked out at the Custom House and the shifting streams of lights and the steady dark roll of the river under the falling snow, and I hoped to God that somehow or other, before it was too late, we would all find our way back home.
I’d rather see an apartment block any day, all charged up with people who go out to work every morning and keep this country buzzing and then come home to the nice little places they’ve earned, than a field doing bugger-all good to anyone except a couple of cows.
In Cal’s view, morals involve something more than terminology. Ben damn near lost his mind over the importance of using the proper terms for people in wheelchairs, and he clearly felt pretty proud of himself for doing that, but he didn’t mention ever doing anything useful for one single person in one single wheelchair.
The wind blows itself out, and dawn comes to the window cold and still in a clear gold-green.
The sun has started to slide down the sky.
Her belief is built purely out of hope, piled on top of nothing, solid as smoke. Her worry, on the other hand, is dense and sharp-cornered as a lump of rock.
And even if I somehow didn’t: I had killed someone, and I always would have. It was always going to be like this. There was no undoing this, no talking my way out, no fixing it or apologizing it away, no smoothing off the sharp edges or planing it down so it could be tucked away into some smaller, manageable box. Instead it would grind me away till I fit around its own immutable shape.
The greens and golds have thinned to watercolor; the sky is one scoured sweep of pale blue.
I want you at home so that any time I start getting panicky, I can stick my head in and look at you and take a few deep breaths. It’s for my sake, not yours.
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.
I hope in that half hour she lived all her million lives.
Landscape is one of the few things he knows of where the reality doesn’t let you down.
Despite not having touched a drop of booze yesterday, he has the same feeling he associates with hangovers, a heavy, prickly disinclination towards everything around him. He wants today over and done with.
He feels no urge to understand the stars better; he’s contented with them as they are.
I think it’s just your basic teenage debris.