decide to leave you here all day.’
The Turkey Boy sulked for a while at that.
‘So you’re new to the area. You and your mother moved here recently?’ Raphie asked.
The boy nodded.
‘Where from?’
‘The Republic of Your Arse.’
‘Very clever,’ Raphie said sarcastically.
‘So why did you leave the Porsche guy so quickly?’ he finally asked, curiosity getting the better of him. ‘Did you chicken out or something?’
‘Don’t be daft, son, I gave him a warning,’ Raphie said, straightening up defensively in his chair.
‘But that’s illegal, you should have given him a ticket. He could kill someone speeding around like that.’
Raphie’s eyes darkened and the Turkey Boy knew to stop his goading.
‘Are you going to listen to the rest of the story or what?’
‘Yeah, I am. Go on.’ The boy leaned forward on the table and rested his hand under his chin. ‘I’ve got all day,’ he smiled cheekily.
At 5.59 a.m., Lou awoke. The previous evening had gone exactly as predicted: by the time he had made it to bed, Ruth’s back had been firmly turned with the bedclothes tightly tucked around her, leaving her as accessible as a fig in a roll. The message was loud and clear.
Lou couldn’t find it within himself to comfort her, to cross over that line that separated them in bed, and in life, to make things okay. Even as students, broke and staying in the worst accommodations he had ever experienced, with the temperamental heating and bathrooms they had had to share with dozens of others, things had never been like this. They’d shared a single bed in a box-bedroom so small that they had to walk outside for a change of mind, but they didn’t mind, in fact they loved being so close to each other. Now they had a giant six-foot-six bed, so big that even when they both lay on their backs their fingers just about brushed when they stretched out. A monstrosity of space and cold spots covered the sheets that couldn’t be reached to be warmed.
Lou thought back to the beginning, when he and Ruth had first met – two young nineteen-year-olds, carefree and drunk, celebrating the end of first-year university Christmas exams. With a few weeks’ break ahead of them and concerns about results far from their minds, they had met on comedy night in the International Bar on Wicklow Street. After that night, Lou had thought about her every day while back home with his parents for the holidays. With every slice of turkey, every sweet wrapper he unravelled, every family fight over Monopoly, she was in his mind. Because of her he’d even lost his title in the Count the Stuffing competition he’d had with Marcia and Quentin. Lou stared at the ceiling and smiled, remembering how each year he and his siblings – paper crowns on their heads and tongues dangling from their mouths – would get down to counting every crumb of stuffing on their plate, long after his parents had left the table. Every year, Marcia and Quentin would join together to beat him, but they couldn’t sustain the desire, and his dedication – some would say obsession – could never be matched. But it was matched that year, and then beaten by Quentin, because the phone had rung and it had been her, and that had been it for Lou. Childish ways were put behind. Or that was supposed to be the theory of when he became a man. Perhaps he wasn’t one yet.
The nineteen-year-old of that Christmas would have longed for this moment right now. He would have grabbed the opportunity with both hands, to be transported to the future just to have her right beside him in a fine bed, in a fine house, with two beautiful children sleeping in the next rooms. He looked at Ruth beside him in bed. She had rolled onto her back, her mouth slightly parted, her hair like a haystack on top of her head. He smiled.
She’d done better than him in those Christmas exams, which was no hard task, but she had repeated that performance the following three years too. Study had always come so easily to her, while he, on the other hand, seemed to have to burn the candle at both ends in order just to scrape by. He didn’t know where she ever found the time to think, let alone study, she was so busy leading the way through their adventurous nights on the town. They’d crashed parties on a weekly basis, then been thrown out, slept on fire escapes, and Ruth still made it into college for the first lecture with her assignments completed. She could do it all at once. Ruth had led the way for everybody, always bored with sitting around. She’d needed adventure, she’d needed outrageous situations and anything that wasn’t ordinary. He was the life and she had been the soul of every party and every day.
Any time he’d failed an exam and had been forced to repeat, she’d been there, writing out essays for him to learn. She’d spend the summers turning study into quiz-show games, introducing prizes and buzzers, quick-fire rounds and punishments. She’d dress up in her finery, acting as quiz-show host, assistant, model, displaying all the fine things he could win if he answered all the questions correctly. She made score cards, wrote out questions, included tacky music and fake applause into every quiz they had. Food shopping was a game; with her controlling the list of treats like a game-show host. For a box of popcorn answer her this.
‘Pass,’ he’d say, frustrated, trying to grab the box anyway.
‘No passing, Lou, you know this one,’ she’d say firmly, blocking the shelves.
He wouldn’t know the answer but she’d make him know it. Somehow she’d push him until he reached deep into a part of his brain that he didn’t know existed and he’d find the answer he never knew that he knew. Just before making love, she’d stall and pull away from him.
‘Answer me this.’
Despite his protests and wrestling to get what he wanted, she’d hold back. ‘Come on, Lou, you know this one.’
If he didn’t know it, he’d make himself know it.
They planned to go to Australia together after university. A year’s adventure away from Ireland before life started. Determined to succeed and follow friends over there, they spent the year saving for the flights; him working behind a bar in Temple Bar while she tended tables. They saved for the dream together, but he failed his final exams and Ruth didn’t. He would have packed it all in there and then, but she wouldn’t let him, influencing his decision and convincing him he could do it, as she did everything. So while he began the first few months of the same year again, Ruth celebrated passing with flying colours, receiving an honours degree at a graduation ceremony that Lou couldn’t bring himself to attend. He’d attended the afters, though, had a few too many drinks and made the night miserable for her. He could at least do that for her.
In the year waiting for him to finish, Ruth completed a Business Masters Degree. Just for something to do. She never once pushed it in his face, never made him feel a failure, never celebrated any wonderful achievement of her own in order not to make him feel any less. She was always the friend, the girlfriend, the life and soul of every party, the A student and achiever.
Was that when he started resenting her? All the way back then? He didn’t know if it was because he never felt good enough, whether it was a way of punishing her,
