What does that mean, you think I’m lying? There’s nothing going on there, trust me.
For a few seconds Lorraine says nothing. He swallows some beer and puts the can down on the table. It is extremely irritating that his mother thinks he and Marianne are together, when the closest they have come in years to actually being together was earlier this evening, and it ended with him crying alone in his room.
You’re just coming home every weekend to see your beloved mother, then, are you? she says.
He shrugs. If you don’t want me to come home, I won’t, he says.
Oh, come on now.
She gets up to fill the kettle. He watches her idly while she tamps her teabag down into her favourite cup, then he rubs at his eyes again. He feels like he has ruined the life of everyone who has ever even marginally liked him.
*
In April, Connell sent one of his short stories, the only really completed one, to Sadie Darcy-O’Shea. She emailed back within an hour:
Connell it’s incredible! let us publish it please! xxx
When he read this message his pulse hammered all over his body, loud and hard like a machine. He had to lie down and stare at the white ceiling. Sadie was the editor of the college literary journal. Finally he sat up and wrote back:
I’m glad you liked it but I don’t think it’s good enough to be published yet, thanks though.
Instantly Sadie replied:
PLEASE? XXX
Connell’s entire body was pounding like a conveyor belt. No one had ever read a word of his work before that moment. It was a wild new landscape of experience. He paced around the room massaging his neck for a while. Then he typed back:
Ok, how about this, you can publish it under a pseudonym. But you also have to promise you won’t tell anyone who wrote it, even the other people who edit the magazine. Ok?
Sadie wrote back:
haha so mysterious, I love it! thank you my darling! my lips are forever sealed xxx
His story appeared, unedited, in the May issue of the magazine. He found a copy in the Arts Block the morning it was printed and flipped straight to the page where the story appeared, under the pseudonym ‘Conor McCready’. That doesn’t even sound like a real name, he thought. All around him in the Arts Block people were filing into morning lectures, holding coffee and talking. On the first page of the text alone Connell noticed two errors. He had to shut the magazine for a few seconds then and take deep breaths. Students and faculty members continued to walk past, heedless of his turmoil. He reopened the magazine and continued reading. Another error. He wanted to crawl under a plant and burrow into the earth. That was it, the end of the publication ordeal. Because no one knew he had written the story he could not canvass anyone’s reaction, and he never heard from a single soul whether it was considered good or bad. In time he began to believe it had only been published in the first place because Sadie was lacking material for an upcoming deadline. Overall the experience had caused him far more distress than pleasure. Nonetheless he kept two copies of the magazine, one in Dublin and one under his mattress at home.
*
How come Marianne went home so early? says Lorraine.
I don’t know.
Is that why you’re in a foul mood?
What’s the implication? he says. I’m pining after her, is that what you’re saying?
Lorraine opens her hands as if to say she doesn’t know, and then sits back down waiting for the kettle to boil. He’s embarrassed now, which makes him cross. Whatever there is between him and Marianne, nothing good has ever come of it. It has only ever caused confusion and misery for everyone. He can’t help Marianne, no matter what he does. There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defence or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you. Still, he would lie down and die for her at any minute, which is the only thing he knows about himself that makes him feel like a worthwhile person.
