Eleven Months

Conor had been counting in days until about the sixth month, and then in weeks, and now, at eleven months, he'd started counting in things. First Christmas. First funeral, Uncle Pat in February, a pint of Coke at the back of the pub and the feeling of wearing the wrong clothes. First time someone from the old days saw him in Dunnes and did the double-take. First wedding. Today. Aoife had asked him, months back, if he'd be alright with it. "There'll be a bar," she'd said, in the careful voice everyone had used with him for a year, and he'd said, "There's a bar everywhere, love, I can't live in a field," and she'd laughed, but she'd also talked to Rob, and Rob had talked to the hotel, and now there was a jug of something with mint in it on his table that nobody else had, which was kind, and which made him want to walk into the sea. The ceremony was fine. Better than fine. He'd read the bit from Corinthians without his hands shaking, which was the first thing he'd done in public without his hands shaking in about three years. The meal was fine. He sat between his cousin Sinéad, who was pregnant and therefore also not drinking, and Rob's aunt, who told him about her hip. It was the speeches that got him. The best man was Rob's brother, Killian, a big lad with a big laugh, and the speech was the usual, stag stories, a bit about the first date, and then, towards the end, with a glass in his hand, "And I want to say a word about Conor, the bride's brother, who's on the fizzy water tonight, fair play to him, we've all been there the morning after, haven't we lads," and the room laughed, and Conor laughed, because that's what you do, and inside him something went very still and very cold. We've all been there. He got up during the applause. Toilets, he mouthed to Sinéad, and went out through the double doors, past the toilets, out the side door into the car park, where it was raining, and stood under the smoking shelter with his hands in his pockets.

We've all been there. As if it was a hangover. As if it hadn't been his mother crying in a hospital corridor and Aoife not speaking to him for four months and a night in a Garda station he still couldn't put in order. Killian didn't know. It was nobody's fault, and it was still a stone in his chest. He took his phone out. He'd had the number for eleven months. Frank. Sixty-one, retired bus driver, eighteen years sober, met him at the second meeting in Balbriggan. "Any time," Frank had said. "Three in the morning. Christmas Day. I've been rung on both." And Conor had never rung, because ringing was admitting he couldn't do it on his own, and doing it on his own was the whole point. Except it wasn't. That was the thing they kept saying at the meetings, the thing he'd nodded at and never believed. He rang. Frank picked up on the second ring, like he'd been holding the phone. "Conor. You alright?" "I'm at Aoife's wedding." "I know. You told me. How's it going?" "There's a free bar." "There is, yeah." "And the best man just made a joke." He told him. Frank didn't interrupt. When he'd finished there was the rain on the shelter roof, and then Frank said, "Right. Where are you now?" "Car park." "And what are you going to do?" "I don't know." "You do, though. You rang me. That's what you're going to do. You've already done it." Conor laughed. It came out wet. "That's it?" "That's it. You rang instead of walking to the bar. That's the entire thing. Everything else is just doing that again tomorrow." A pause. "Now go back in and dance with your sister. She's been looking for you. She'll have noticed." "How do you know she'll have noticed?" "Because she asked the hotel for a jug of water with mint in it, you eejit." He went back in. Aoife was by the door, shoes in her hand, and she looked at his face and didn't ask. "Are you dancing?" she said. "I'm dancing." The band was doing something terrible. He danced badly, in the suit that fit, with his sister, and Killian came over and clapped him on the back and said "Good man," meaning nothing by it, and at half eleven he got a taxi home and sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea, and texted Frank, "Home. Thanks." And Frank texted back, "Day 336. Go to bed." He went to bed.