Bright Burning Things(7)

Speed helps, I’ve always known this, in whatever form it comes: running used to do it, sprinting, then amphetamines, anything that sped me up helped me outrun the voices. The kick of performing did it – let me step outside of myself, my only awareness the pulsing of blood in my throat, wrists, veins popping – and dancing, swimming, fucking, oblivion. Roberto taught me the feeling of speed behind a wheel, usually some kind of Ferrari. Granted, this old jalopy can’t exactly break speed barriers, but it helps – the car shaking, loose parts rattling, the engine roaring – it creates an illusion of winning, of outsmarting the shadows, outrunning the curses. Anything that lifts me out of myself, even for a sweet blessed moment, even the blaring of the horn in the opposite lane, the car swerving to avoid me. My breath is caught high in my chest, and I feel turned on, like when Roberto would take me in a public toilet. I catch a glimpse of my son in the mirror, jumping up and down in his seat, rocking against the belt, testing its limits.





4


‘Home sweet home,’ I say as the turn to the cottages materialises as if out of a fog. I’ve no idea where I’ve been these last few minutes. Force myself to slow down, to climb back inside myself, as I drive in second gear up our road. ‘Yaya!’ Tommy shouts. ‘You’re driving like a smelly ole granny! Fasterfasterfaster!’ As soon as I pull on to the kerb outside our house I can sense that we’re being watched. Might have to make that call to the guards after all – this is clear-cut stalking now, harassment. I fling open the front door, then lift Tommy (see what a considerate mother I am, you watching, Mrs O’Nosy?) into the living room, where I settle him on the couch, Herbie hopping up beside him. I run back and retrieve the bag with the wine and the food, then slam my front door and lock it from the inside. Damn, I’d forgotten the grill was unusable, I’ll have to put the fish fingers in the oven. Would that work? ‘MiWadi, Tommy?’ I shout, looking around for the orange squash. The TV is already on, two packs of ten fish fingers are in the oven and the full glass is saluting me, with its pledge to numb and soothe. Ice, clink, cheers. Herbie pads into the kitchen, panting. ‘Ok, Woofter, ok, don’t give me that look. I know you’re hungry. Just a few minutes more.’

‘He’s thirsty, Yaya. Like you,’ Tommy says from the couch. How can he hear with the noise from the TV so loud? I don’t like the tone of his voice. How can a four-year-old be supercilious, act like he knows more than I do? I run water into Herbie’s bowl and no sooner than it touches the floor the dog is lapping, gulping. When was the last time I put water down for him? It was one of the things the people in the pound said: fresh water twice a day. A large dog like him needs plenty of rehydration. ‘Sorry, old boy,’ I say as his big tongue swallows the contents of the bowl, and then he waits patiently for more. I fill and refill the bowl four times, the same number of times I quench my own thirst.

‘Yaya? Are the fishies burning again?’ Jesus, that tone again, and he’s right, again, smoke is seeping from the mouth of the oven. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck… My boy parrots me: Fuckety-fuck, he sings. I scrape the carbon off the top and remove all the orange coating, the very thing, the only thing, that entices Tommy to eat them in the first place. Place them bottom-side up in a mound on a plate and present them with a flourish to my son.

The three of us sit side by side on the couch, some humongous guy singing on Britain’s Got Talent, everyone up on their feet and cheering, like at a gladiators’ battle or a public hanging. I know only too well the serpents that seduce one moment and bite the next. How did I – a nobody, from nowhere (suburban Dublin nowhere), with no experience, no connections – ever get accepted into RADA? I look back at my decision to audition and I marvel. Ms Nobody determined to be Ms Somebody! That capacity for self-delusion, it served me sometimes.

I manage to eat one of the fish fingers, while Herbie polishes off eleven and Tommy seven. We all cuddle into each other before the curtain falls on this particular scene: the audience is giving me a standing ovation, I’m bowing from my waist, and tears are flowing all round. ‘Electric’, they gush, ‘Simply stunning’, ‘Touched by greatness’, ‘A miraculous performance by an Irish unknown set to take the London scene by storm’, ‘A whirlwind of emotion’, ‘Beautiful and terrifying in equal measure’, ‘Vulnerable yet ferocious’… The reviews keep coming; it’s possible I might drown in the sudden flood of attention: words in print and out, hands clapping, people standing, feet stamping, those tears (crocodile or genuine?), thousands of new friends on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (stupid addictive spaces, stupid fawning people), autographs, chat shows – and the standing in the spotlight, drinking it all in, pissed, high, out of my skin. My appearance as Hedda in a revised version by a trendy new playwright is the performance of the decade: sex-starved, voracious, vulnerable, powerful, trapped, free.

I’m living in a hall of mirrors, my image distorted and bounced back at me: beautiful, grotesque, famous, grotesque, brilliant, grotesque. I’m a sad, needy clown.

‘Yaya? Yaya?’ Tommy’s voice tugs at the edge of my consciousness as I rock, clutching my stomach, sweat pouring out of me. He’s blowing on my face and Herbie’s big tongue is licking me. Five years ago now. How fast I slid down the snake’s back and how perilous that climb on the ladder was in the first place. The sensation of being judged, good or bad, strangled me. That, and the fact that I always knew one day I’d be found out.