I Tilt My Head, There Is Something About Being Here Nowadays That Makes My Skin Itch, As If It Should

bear with me, I’m returning from a year off and feel like Bambi learning to stand again.

Long fingers prodded at aching joints, she just didn’t move the way she used to and yet her brain told her she could still rise to the occasion if push came to shove. West end trained, she was, and Darragh had supported her at every juncture, save how much he whinged at the London smog and the hovel of a flat they called home for a few years, a wee one bedroom crammed into a Victorian on the outskirts of Notting Hill. Men like him weren’t destined to be hemmed in, he was forever scratching at the walls and stomping the green of Hampstead Heath, but even that felt like a cattle shed compared with home and it’s vast expanses of nothing. But her, she slotted into the chaos as if it was a second skin, the volume of bodies, stacked on top of one another, the noise - it felt right. Dutifully, he was either front row, or stage door every night, and for his efforts she dug a little deeper into the little life they shared.

He tried, for her, to stay - paying more than they could afford back then to size up once Connor came along, adding a wriggling pink baby in among the sequins and sparkle worked for a time, but even she had to admit trying to raise him in the din, parcelling him up for school on the tube was not the kitsch childhood she had envisioned for her family. 

Oh, but the sickly sweet smell of sweat mixed with perfume, the bruises that mottled her skin - rehearsal after rehearsal, the life was addictive, she adored it, and it her. When they left to go back to Ireland it snuffed a light out in her, swapped spotlights and dance shoes for nappies, homework and toddler classes. 

Saoirse taught children’s ballet classes for a while, in the small town hall, peppered with flyers for mum and baby groups, the local food bank, bin collection days. It wasn’t enough. Instead she felt a rot in her gut, stirring within the hole she couldn’t fill. The only thing that compared was the scent at the crown of her children’s heads. Their innocence, the pure light they emitted felt almost as intoxicating as the warmth of the stage light. Some would say being a mother was the making of you, but for her, she had been made and moulded years ago. Married to the game, and Darragh was aware and all too happy to allow it, but he’d be remiss if he didn’t admit he cherished the time he had her all to himself.

When Blair came back with her airy fairy idea for a new club, it wasn’t crazy enough that it didn’t curl its talons into Saoirse almost immediately. Something she lost sleep over, and sometimes she’d put on the costumes just to feel the scratch of the sequins against pale flesh, relishing in the red welts it drew over her skin. She’d had two children, so the zip strained and her hips pushed at the fabric. Darragh used to watch her, and all at once he’d remember how the stage split those ruby red lips in two, and she’d beam. The notion of being able to have a hand in it all over again had ripped jagged holes in her stony façade, letting light tough parts of her that had gone dark years ago. 

Opening Absinthe re-ignited something in her, a warmth spreading through her, Darragh wasn’t ready to lose her to the city, and so he bankrolled it in Spiriod, and though he hadn’t considered it at the time, he got his wife back immediately, a flurry of red hair and sparkle and all at once they were 20 again, except this time, they were home.

He washes, but is never clean, an impenetrable layer of grime as a reminder of the life to which he is associated. It is a tick he has picked up in his time here, scrubbing whenever able, and when not holding sore fingertips under hot water he is wiping his palms on his overalls, spattering blue with spreading masses of damp. Patting himself down incessantly, as if looking for his wallet, instead it is the way his body copes with being pulled from what he finds comfortable. 

Seventeen long months he has been inside, and he is not long from release. He went down  for grand larceny, possession with intent to supply, resisting arrest…and the assault weapon he’d been supplied with, courtesy of Locke & Co to take out his role. Thankfully he had chosen the right side of the fence to fall on and the Locke’s looked after their own, and they had enough cops on the payroll to avoid bringing the wrong noses in sniffing around any of the bodies that dropped to protect the business. Turns out, the bigger you grow, the more rats want to dig through plump bellies to further their own agenda. Spiriod just wasn’t big enough to hold that amount of dick swingin’. It wasn’t the world he would’ve chosen, but it was the life he had adopted in the name of belonging somewhere. 

For the moment, he belonged in maximum security, he had taken a plea deal as discussed with Lip, and had managed to reduce his sentence on good behaviour. Ruben had become a lot of things, but he wasn’t a rat, and even squirrelled away behind slate grey nothingness, he had a job to do - Douglas Morris was someone he needed to either; befriend and get information out of surreptitiously for his bosses to sort out. Or - remove him as an issue altogether. Douglas Morris was, to put it politely, a peculiar fellow, who worked for Mr. Shea himself. There was something about recruiting insanity that bred chaos, and Mick had made it a fine art. No matter what he did, Douglas Morris was a serial convict - and he supposed he too was a result of blind loyalty in a way, a man without a soul. Although he didn’t really understand his charges, or why he was inside and so oftentimes they didn’t stick. Blissful ignorance, he supposed. 

Ruben truly believed he had the constitution of an ox to cope with most things, but his track record in denial trailed behind him in a wake of horrors that would make most hard faced men blush. He did what he had to, and truly what he thought was right for the people he loved, sometimes blindly and very much to a fault. 

The front he had put on before he came in had faltered, and quickly. Instead, what was left behind was the little boy his sister had scooped out of the UK when he was 14. Unsure of his place here or otherwise and now he sat across from a man that seemed to putrefy as the seconds went by. A bulbous nose that had somehow grown a face around it, as though someone had pulled at the edges and made him from plasticine. Cartoonish in his appearance, hair stuck out as if damp fingers had prodded at a plug socket. There was a chirp in his voice that unsettled him, and unfortunately, now he discovered, befriending this man for information was far worse than removing him altogether. 

He told tales with such honesty, it made him sick. Some of them involved people he knew, people that wore the scars of being involved with him. He understood with perfect clarity why Philip had chosen this man to pull to bits. There is, indeed, a place in hell for men that allow animals like this one to lay their hands on their daughter, but it was what had happened. To Mick, Blair was both collateral and an obstacle and bless her, she paid the price. Ruben also knew, as stoic and stony faced as Philip was, he wouldn’t have managed a conversation with him without ripping his chest open and taking a mouthful of his heart whilst it still beat in his palm. Blair was his wife - and true, enough was enough now. 

Cold eyes stopped quivering just long enough to make him set his jaw, and rub his palms over his knees until they felt hot. Douglas cocked his head, in the same innocent way a dog would should he have heard his name. Ruben’s body ached, he fought at every turn the fight or flight in his gut and somehow managed to paint a plastic smile on thinned lips and irises flickered to the fork Douglas turned in his fingers, before replacing it next to his knife to painstakingly deconstruct his pie, lining the components up one by one. 

“Time for another story?”

Ruben’s brow lofted, as saliva slid like rocks down his gullet. “Better than the last?” 

Douglas shrugged, glowing vermillion in the pride he felt for his conquests. “Mick asked me once - “ Ruben frowned, feigning confusion at the name. “Oh, Mick Shea, he’s my best friend.” Ruben nodded, perturbed by his childlike passion for his little bubble.

“Do you miss him?” Ruben found himself asking, and a large snaggle tooth smile spread over his counterpart’s face. “Every day.” He paused. “Why do you ask?” He licks his thumb and squashes pastry into the hole in his face. Ruben watches the sugar coat his lips, and the pastry sink into his beard. 

Ruben shrugged this time. “Just talkin’ Doug.” 

He nodded, dusting off his hands and Ruben shifted in his seat, thinking of the bacteria landing onto Douglas’s food, and so he clung to his knees. 

“There was a girl, blonde, let's call her Heather, so bubbly. Mick thought she spoke too much, ya know? Told me that secrets kept families close, and that she was going to tell the bad people things and it would upset Mrs. Shea.” 

“Wouldn’t want that, Mr and Mrs Shea sound like good folks,” He agreed, barely masking the disdain in his voice. 

Ruben fixed his gaze, as the creature sat opposite him unfurled his sorry tale with immense joy. He felt as if he had spent all of this time working the relationship to get a kick in the teeth at the end of it. He recognised it was evidence Lip needed to use against Mick, and yet, the doubt in his gut as to what the greater good was where these two men were concerned had spread like a cancer and he questioned often between the clanks of cell doors, and the cries of trapped men, whether it was all worth it. 

Then he thought of his sister, and it gave him more gousto to continue. 

Douglas finished his story, panting like a hound in glee - it was evident he found joy in the horrors of snuffing out life. Or perhaps it was more pleasing his master so he could get a treat that did it. Either way, it took a few for Ruben to come back down to earth. 

“Sounds to me pal, like ya did the right thing.” He responded meekly. “We gotta do our best for our family, huh?”

He prayed between guttural sobs that evening, if there was a God, he had never begged him before, but he needed out and set his mind to it that he would no longer follow blindly. That these people weren’t family, not really, he had one sister and that was it. He belonged there now, and he would still go to the ends of the earth for them…but he would use the tongue in his head to voice his doubts. 

FOUR WEEKS LATER. 

Daylight spread over his skin like melted butter, sunshine hit differently when accompanied with freedom he supposed. His sister had barrelled into him, reminding him she was surprisingly spry for a tiny woman. Lip stood silently, drawing on a cigarette - no change there. 

“Y’alright der brother?”

Ruben craned his neck to look back at where he had been the small dots behind the windows and wondered for a moment what Douglas would think happened to the only friend he’d ever made in there. 

Meeting Philip’s gaze, hidden behind dark framed sunglasses, he nodded. Meeting him toe to toe for a lax hug. “Let’s get ye home, eh? Pour a lager down your neck and put together what you got from inside.” Lips palm felt hot on his spine, almost alien and if it weren’t for the sweat that beaded at his hairline, he wouldn’t think his skin was his own at all. He didn’t have sleeves on to wipe his hands now, and so instead he awkwardly scratched his forearms. 

The reunion did not go as Lip had envisaged, he may have felt guilty, but he wouldn’t show it. Blair had left early, dismayed by the bits her husband had left out of Ruben’s stay in the big house and all at once he noticed she had the same issue, her skin didn’t fit quite right and it pulled her, she had given him a knowing look. There were two of them in that room that had seen the same look in Douglas Morris’ eyes and it had changed them forever.

It had aged him, and the ticks remained. The lager his boss had promised had instead opened the proverbial floodgates to a shower of shit he hadn’t counted on. The joy and the partying had given to drunken disorder and leant against Lip at the bar, a rare smile coating his visage, Ruben sniffed. 

“Dunno whut you’re so ‘appy about.”

Brows furrowed. “What? Yer home, s’all I’m bothered about. Proud of yer, Ru.”

He turned. “Fuckin’ proud of me? I did the dirty work, that fella is a fuckin’ monster and you left me in there.”

Lip stayed quiet, which only made him angrier. “Owt to say? No - sorry I put you in that position Ru. Just get me to do the shit jobs ain’t ya? Ruben’ll do it. Do this Ru, do that Ru, jump of a bridge and break ya fuckin’ neck for us, Ru.”

No response, just a heavy hand at his shoulder, which he knocked off with all the surly attitude of a teenage boy. 

“Feck off, Lip. Only reason I did that and not you is cause youze a fuckin’ coward.” He drew the word out like it was poison and Philip lapped it up, grasping his face and pulling it toward him. 

“Listen ere’, we all do our fair share of shite, believe you me. It’s dirty work, ain’t all coke and whores and fuckin’ sunshine. This is ours, and I’ll do owt to protect what’s ours.” He let go, jabbing an outstretched finger into his chest. “M’ fuckin sorry.” Ruben swallowed, not expecting the apology, as flimsy as it was, he recognised it came from his gut to deliver and so this time, Ruben stayed quiet. 

“That vile pig of a man, will stop at nothing to ruin our lives and he uses psychopaths like that freak to do it. He did this to his daughter, my-” He drew in breath as the air between them changed and the hand fell on his shoulder again, instead, this time Ruben put his over top. “She’s my fuckin’ wife, Ruben. My second chance. M’family’s all I got, n’ if we take our foot off their necks for one second they could take that from us. You hear?”

Ruben nodded, choosing to let Lip have his soapbox. “You was put in there cuz I trust ya’, and you’ve never let me down.” His hand dropped and reached for the crumpled cigarette packet on the bar. “Plus I thought you might’ve found a little boyfriend in there, lord knows you need one.”

Ruben took a cigarette from the packet as it was offered and a huff of laughter departed open maw. “You’re a wanker.”

“P’haps.” Lighter met the filter and Lip reached to light Ruben’s for him. “Look, you need a thick skin for this shite, it doesn’t go away, just gets gnarlier until you don’t know what’s a nightmare and what’s your wakin’ reality. Swallow what shit he told you, and use it, do not let it break you.” 

There’s a light, and it flickers - philip watched his wife circle it, a look of exasperation mottling her face, and yet the image let solemn lips crack open into a smile. Be it that his gut tells him she is his wife, but the commitment says otherwise…or be it the idiocy he finds in watching her struggle rather than her asking for help, it curls the corners of slack maw all the same.

The hallway lightbulb, it was another something he had promised and not gotten around to. He watched her turn it on and off, each glow of the bulb illuminating a new line of frustration. Their house had so many knocks and notches now from a variety of fuckery and now it bore the scars of their life there. In truth, he liked it that way, in every crack lay a memory.

Both of them had the money to fix it and then some, but there was an unspoken understanding that they’d get around to it, the thin veneer of perfection was undone with a closer look, but it was them. It was their space and it illustrated every fight and every make up. Every kiss, every shag - the 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 in the oak floor, the creak in a floorboard set free the laughter they forgot about when times felt too tough to bear.

Albeit it was a ‘man’ way to think of things. For his wife, it was merely something else for her to bleet at him for. It ignited the ever present need in her; to nest, and home make, regardless of whether or not there were children present. Their lives had never been any different, even after all this time. It held the ever present guilt that he hadn’t been able to give her children; they both blamed themselves but took care not to dwell.

He watched her ferret from room to room, and knew by now the exact moment she’d snap and call him out for the useless son of a bitch he knew he could be. Philip was his 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫’𝐬 son, god rest her soul, and there was something in him that loved the banter, the opportunity to rise and fulfil the husband character he so 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. To prove his point; to make it upto her and force them back into the small box in which they just were : in love with each other and each of their imperfections.

He knew the life they shared wasn’t perfect, it was hardly the shit fairy tales were made of but it suited them.

The smile grew wider over the lines in his face, and he relished in the ache. Philip rubbed grubby mit through the mop of inky locks at his scalp, stubbing out puthering tab end in waiting ashtray. Blair was made for him, and he her.

Crossing one boot over the other, he leant back in his chair, and he watched as his dainty wife shot a look over her shoulder, blonde tendrils tumbling past her shoulder blade, he wanted to 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧, he thought.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞. Everyone said he used to laugh, and with her, with her there was still some cause to. To cat and mouse, to play house like children would.

Cerulean irises fluttered to the banal on the television, a ticking wheel of some bullshit American dream game show. “Feck me, Shirley, the answers fuckin’ 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐞.”

It was just enough, a whisper of change in the air and he watched dainty palm make contact with the living room door. Blair crackled, an electricity to their coupling. To be sure, she was on the ceiling now and in probability rules she could have shorted the electrics in the whole house with her temper alone.

His eyes flickered again to meet hers.

“What’s wrong bird?” Door handle met drywall and slotted into the last fight hole it made. Long fingers reached for the next cigarette, running the filter over his lower lip, he lifts struck match to tobacco.

“Are ye’ yankin’ my fuckin’ dick Lip?”

He blinked, raising a playful eyebrow. Shaking the match out, he watches grey smoke meet the blue of his cigarette, curling around one another, and allows himself a moment to dwell on glowing embers.

“And why would I be doin’ that?” He inhaled, slowly, measured, turning his head back towards the tv. “M’ just watchin’ television, love.”

Anger meets television screen as she launches the laundry basket perched on her hip at blue glow. “Catch Phrase?! Ya kiddin’ love- you ain’t watched this with any degree of seriousness ever, n’ Stephen fuckin’ Mulhern turns me stomach the diddy wee cunt.”

She sighed, exasperated, and pottered to the hallway. He pressed his lips together, brimming with adoration for the fire in her, comical that her reactions were always gigantic even in the face of the smallest inconvenience.

This was it. The 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐞 - she’d make to do it herself, teetering delicately on step stool, he watched every curve of her and resigned himself to the fact she’d ruined him for all other women. To be sure - he was more than okay with that.

He sighed, hauling himself up off the chair on which he had sunk. “Baby.”

“Fuck off will ya? I’ll do it myself.”

“Baby.” He moves towards her. “Son of a bitch B, let me do it would ya? You’re gonna fall and snap ye chuffing neck, and then ye'd definitely be no use at all.”

“Philip, I mean it, go away.”

He laughs, a low chuckle; and she blows, swinging for him, but she stumbles, he grasps her hips. And he couldn’t be happier to be right it fills him with a warm glow, same as the one he feels at the crown of his head as flat palm meets it. Still - he clings to wriggling woman.

Slowly, he props her onto her feet on the floor, and moves to twist flickering bulb from its mount. “Let me do it, darlin’, a’ said I would didn’ I?”

She sniffs, resigned, an unexplained smirk on her face. For a second he thinks he’s won, before thumb and forefinger find the heat in the bulb.

“Mother fucker.” He spits and she crumples beside him. Shaking his hand he turns. “You little bitch.”

Laughter breaks and he scowls. “Ya fuckin’ useless with me even now love. Cmon, rinse ya fingers and do it with a rag next time.” She takes his hand in hers and leads him to the sink, tending to the growing redness on his fingertips.

Fuckin’ perfection. P’haps it was time after all these years to make an honest woman of her, neither of them even mentioned it much anymore.

She won, even when she didn’t. His wife. His Blair, she was a force of nature and would outsmart him even in 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡.

In another life, Sundays are slow, waking up to peer through fogged windows at the morning frost, warm brew prickling red blotches onto alabaster skin. A white carpet of prickles, succumbing to morning warmth, the scent of expectant snow on the air and the hush of sheets and tangled bodies. They could be unassuming and undone. Nowhere to be. No business to attend to, no one needed them. A law unto themselves, as it should be. 

In another life, the warm glow of Christmas lights is accompanied by hot breath on cold air, cinnamon spices rushing over hot tongue. Mulled wine and laughter. Coins in charity buckets for local rugby teams dressed as Santa Claus, festive cheer given too generously, papercuts from wrapping too many presents and midnight mass, Irish lilt in community buzz, Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials and too many brandys. Still faces scan over joyous children, anxiously awaiting morn, Christmas lists fulfilled. Cerulean gaze watches his wife potter at the stove, pulled away only by the jingling laughter and giddy feet of his daughters, clumsy clambering into his lap. Hands that held them steady, free of the quiver he has become so used to, tremors he is told God has gifted him as punishment for being a cunt. 

In another life, she gets to feel the fattening swell of life in her womb. Of growth. Tiny hands and feet and thick dark curls. The piercing cry they so desperately wanted to get up for in the wee hours. Tiny life. Tiny perfect life. He dreamt of daughters that were every bit their mother. Daughters that would crawl into bed between them after bad dreams, daughters who craved to be held, . He had always wanted daughters, too aware of how most sons he had met had turned out. 

Slow living is what he thinks of, simplicity, of nights sprawled in front of the television, rain on the windows and salty air on long beach walks. Beautiful chaos in blissful weekends, Sunday roasts and teaching his kids to ride a bike. He wished for hard working hands, callouses from honest work, to plunge sore knuckles through morning ice, feel the burn of ice water. Philip liked to be outside, as a wee ‘un had seen himself working with animals, or in farming. It was something just beyond his reach, the promise of another life, of a stronger bond - whispers and dreams that had never come true. Except for one. Her. 

He had her to be grateful for, among all the mess and destruction. He still prayed. Still a god fearing man, adopting the good and forgiving parts of Catholicism at least and he really did recognise the irony seen as he was far beyond saving. He had tried - when he was younger, when the harsh realities of the world they had moved into became apparent, so culturally different from blighty, where hidden putrefaction grew like a mould instead under the banner of conservative catholicism, stringent godliness - to do the right thing. A sort of exchange in his head, for every rotten thing he did, he would attempt an act of good. 

The Magdalene laundries had been a culture shock, and something that twisted his gut, an ugly bleeding wound on the landscape he had come to call home. The cruelty of those nuns, the coldness in their eyes - and the way those girls exhibited fear had been something that still haunted him. Part of his bond with the Sheas was the understanding on both sides, that to better oneself, they could no longer be privy to ugliness and still stick to the status quo. He thought, selfishly perhaps, that if he could save them, it would cancel out what his family had done to their parents. 

Every now and then, he would let himself slip into the life he could’ve had, doing all the things he had been made very aware he was above. His privilege was one built on the sacrifice of others, and in a funny sort of way he felt he should honor them. And so he cleaned, built, grafted - mucked out Blair’s horses and shovelled coal for the fires, donated to church and the local schools. He thought everyone should be humble, even in the face of overblown wealth, on god given rights, on power - and so he enjoyed every second he and Orla spent in those places…putting the fear of god where they thought right, those feckin’ wizened nuns.

His woman was, though he was biased, everything a woman should be. Soft at heart, and giving in nature, a true mother without the children she so deserved. They had had their indiscretions, and been unfortunately cruel to one another - pain did ugly things to people - but their love had never waned and to him that counted for something. 

He still hoped for that other life, and would do everything in his power to give it to her.

Now, he watched her, listening to the turning pages as she read - nimble fingers creeping over the paper's edge. He had things to be doing, but he wanted to watch her, to be kept suspended within the fleeting moments they had at the moment. He had counted down from ten, and told himself five more minutes for over an hour now. The only sound the fire, muffled voices from the television he now only used for noise to pierce the quiet and her, as she moved, existed, breathed life into their home. She would never understand, he suspected, how much he depended on her presence, on how much he truly needed her. Needed her to be there, to be alright, to have the things she deserved. 

She noticed him, then, a smile crackling over her calm visage and she pulled herself upright from her perch, gliding across the room to thread long fingers through his hair, resting at his scalp and without a word, she pulled him to her chest. 

“I know that look.” She knows.

“M’grand, bird. I love you, I do.”

They had moved a long way from exchanging bad for good, the balance had tipped some time ago and he reached desperate claws out to pull it back. He swore it. 

“You need to slow down, love - does too much ill to have a finger in every pie nowadays, some greedy bastard will eat everyone. Remember tha’.” 

Her voice is like bird song and he sinks into her, raising his arms to pull her closer, inhaling her scent. 

In another life.