Part XXV

When I opened the front door, Ronan was right where I had left him, pacing back and forth in the living room. Anger drove the last traces of fear from his eyes as I faced him. He drew a deep breath and was all set to lash out at me when Sean entered the room. “Hey, Ronan,” he said easily. “You lost something, and I found it. Sorry we didn’t get here sooner.”

Ronan did not smile in return, just nodded curtly.

“I must say, it’s nice to get out for a bit, and I’m glad to see you. Up to having some company?”

Ronan shrugged. “Maybe. Can you give me a few minutes?” he asked, and looked at me pointedly.

“Make yourself at home, Sean,” I told him, and followed Ronan down the hall to the bathroom.

He wouldn’t speak to me, and I wasn’t sure if that was due to anger, or the usual shame he suffered when I assisted with his most personal needs. I set him to rights, then laid my hand on his arm, restraining him. “Ronan, wait.”

“What?” he responded coldly.

I slid my hand down and grasped his fingers gently and tried to meet his eyes. He would have none of that and turned his head away.

“Ronan, I’m sorry,” I apologized, and reached out to stroke the cheek I had slapped such a short time before. “I lost my temper, and I hit you, and then I left you. I shouldn’t have done any of that, but I wasn’t thinking rationally. Please, can’t you at least try to be civil to me? I’m doing the best I can for you, and I don’t mind at all, but it’s a hard thing when you’re angry so much of the time.”

“Don’t you think I’ve reason to be?”

“Yes, but—it could have been worse, y’know.”

“True. It could also have never happened.”

“But it did happen, and there’s no way to change that. You’re healing now, though, and it won’t be long before this will all be behind you.”

“I can’t think that far ahead yet. All I know is pain. That, and sitting around like a useless lump, day to day, moment to moment. I wonder, does anyone have any idea what that’s like?”

I stroked his fingers. “Sean does. Why don’t you go talk with him?”

“He’s got problems enough of his own. I don’t want to burden him.”

“Yet for a man with so many problems, he seems a lot happier than you. Don’t you wonder what his secret is?”

Ronan drew himself up a bit taller, and subtle a signal as that was, it told me I had piqued his curiosity. “I suppose if he has one, it might be interesting to know what it is.”

“So you’d like to visit with him after all?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s go back out to the living room.” I smiled at him fondly. “Ronan?”

“What?”

“Look, I know our lives have been turned upside-down in the last few weeks, but in spite of that I want you to remember that I still think you’re damn sexy, and I still want to make love to you. As soon as you feel like you’re ready for it, I promise I’ll make you a very happy man.”

His eyes widened, and a deep flush suffused his cheeks. “Oh! Oh, my word! Of all the things I expected you to say, I—”

Carefully, I embraced him, sank my fingers into his hair, and pressed my lips to his.

He groaned softly as he returned my kiss, and then I knew that this was what he needed more than anything: the reassurance of a loving touch that had nothing to do with care-taking routines. If only I had realized it sooner!

“I know I’ve been an awful bastard, and I’m sorrier than you might think, given the way I’ve been acting. If you really don’t mind, you can make love to me any time you like. I wasn’t thinking about that at all for awhile, but now that I’ve started to feel a bit better physically, it might be nice to be close that way again. So, if you’re sure it’s all right with you that I shan’t be able to do anything but lie there on my back—”

“If I mind, it’s only because I hate to see you like this. I know you’ve been in a lot of pain, and I’ve been afraid to touch you very much, for fear of making it worse. So, all this time I’ve been loving you in small ways. Massaging your head when it aches. Brushing your hair. Feeding you when you’re hungry. Even helping you here in the bathroom. It all adds up to lovemaking you can physically tolerate. Every day, a little more touching, a little more caring. I know it’s hard to see it that way, but—”

“I’m sorry, but there are some things I find impossible to think of as lovemaking. Having my arse wiped by anyone but myself is first on the list, and having another person take aim for me is second.”

“It’s not forever, Ro, and maybe you won’t think about that so much, once we start engaging in more pleasant activities.”

“Say when, and I’m all yours.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” I assured him, and brought my mouth to his again. We kissed for a time, and then Ronan broke away and tossed his hair back, smiling. “Y’know, I’d best go and talk with Sean now. He’ll be wondering what’s taking us so long.”

***

Hard as it was for me to do, once I’d escorted Ronan back to the living room, I excused myself and retired to my bedroom. A copy of his acoustic CD was still in my portable player, so I put on the headphones and turned out the lights. Once again, tired as I was, I failed to hear the whole thing from start to finish, because the sweet music quickly lulled me to sleep and carried me off to a dreamland where Ronan cradled his guitar in fully-healed arms, and played as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

When I woke a bit later, it was pitch-dark, my headphones were askew and silent, and someone was tapping on my door insistently, calling my name.

“Sarah?”

It took me a few moments to remember the progression of the day’s events, but when it did come flooding back, I answered quickly. “Just a minute, Sean.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, then swung my feet over the side of the bed and stood up, stretching. At last, I walked to the door and opened it.

“I’m heading out,” Sean said softly. “Ronan needs you to help him get ready for bed. Don’t be surprised if he passes out cold. He’s exhausted.”

“What time is it?”

“Oh, it’s not the hour that’s worn him out. It’s only ten o’clock. Look, all I can tell you at the moment is he’s finally made his confession, and I think you’ll be seeing a change in his attitude.”

“Did he finally remember what happened?”

“He remembered longer ago than we realized. He just couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.”

“Was it what you thought from the start?”

“Yeah, and the full horror of it is out of his system now. He’s still got a tough road ahead of him, but at least the bad memories won’t play as big a part.”

“Thank God!”

“Indeed. Without the Divine Assistance, I couldn’t have accomplished what I just did.” Sean lifted a hand from one of the crutch grips and patted my shoulder. “Hang in there, and I’ll see you soon.”

“Yes. Thanks for coming, and please thank Mary for me, too. I know she isn’t comfortable with letting you go off on your own.”

“Well, she worries, but I’m not as fragile as she thinks I am. Every so often it does me good to get out on my own, for whatever reason, so I remember there’s more to life than doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions.”

“So, this helped you, too?”

“In an odd sort of way, yeah. Now, take good care of yourself, will you? Because you can’t take care of anyone else properly when you ignore your own needs. Do something nice for yourself every day, even if it’s just treating yourself to a good cup of coffee, or a hot bath, or starting a book you’ve always wanted to read. Simple pleasures that may not take a lot of time, but have the ability to make you feel a whole lot better.”

“That’s good advice. Thank you, Sean. Take it easy, and be careful going home.” I walked downstairs with him, in case he needed help. He could negotiate stairs now, slowly and cautiously, but it was still tough going, and I was poised to grab him if he lost his footing.

“Thanks for coming with me, Sarah. I’m managing a lot better, but getting down a flight of stairs will never be my favorite thing to do. G’night, now.”

“Good night.” I watched to make sure he got to his car safely, and waved as he drove off, then went back upstairs to tend to Ronan.

***

Ronan was still in the living room, slumped in my rocking chair, too weary to sit up straight. “Ronan?”

Without lifting his head, he spoke faintly. “Please, could you help me into bed?”

“Do you want the bathroom first?”

“Yeah.”

I worked as swiftly as I could, and finally the evening routine was complete, and Ronan lay in bed with the down comforter tucked around him, and his arms resting on pillows. “Thank you,” he sighed. “I spent too much time pacing around the house today. It feels good to lie down.”

I lit the pillar candle on the nightstand, as I often did when it seemed we might lie awake and talk for awhile, then slipped beneath the covers and stretched out beside him. “Did you have a good visit with Sean?”

“Yeah. He’s a really extraordinary person.”

“How so?”

“Well, among other things, he has quite a gift for getting a man to talk about all the things he’d rather not.”

“Did he do that for you?”

“Yeah. Sarah, I—well, just after I got out of hospital, I remembered what happened, but I couldn’t talk about it. I was so angry, and—and frightened! At first I thought I wanted to go straight back to N Zed, where I could walk the streets any time I wanted to, and count on being safe. I mean, I was just walking home from Sean’s that night, minding my own business. I was a little high from the success we’d had with the recording, and I needed to burn off some energy. It seemed silly to wait around for a taxi when walking would be simpler and faster, so I cut through the Public Garden. I only stopped for a moment, just outside the gate, to get my bearings, and suddenly there were three guys on me. I wasn’t thinking rationally when one of them tried to take the guitar, and my gut reaction drove me to fight for it. If I’d been up against one man, or maybe even two, I probably could’ve defended myself well enough to throw them off guard and get the hell out of there, but there were three of them. Losing the battle was inevitable, plus I’d made them angry, and they were only too happy to beat the bejaysus out of me. I thought that would be the worst of it, and once they’d run off I could go back to you and have you patch me up, but they were angrier than I realized, and once they got hold of my arms—” He shuddered. “Words can’t begin to describe the horror of it. I’d never felt pain like that in my life. I couldn’t make a sound at first, but once I’d caught my breath all I could do was scream. That was when they shoved me down on the sidewalk, and I fell, and the last thing I remember was a blinding crack in the head. Whether one of them clubbed me, or I hit my head on the ground, I don’t know. After that, there’s no memory of anything but waking up in hospital with a raging headache and my arms in plaster. You know the rest of the story.”

“Oh, Ronan!”

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice choked and husky. “Why does one person do something like this to another? I mean, in all my life I have never intentionally harmed another living soul. I’ve taken pains to be kind to everyone I meet, and to graciously give the time of day and more, if that’s what they require of me. And in my performing years, I gave and gave and gave, until my health was utterly ruined and I nearly died. Even my work with Sean—it was never about me, y’know. In my heart, all I really wanted to do was give something of myself to a man who always dreamed of working with me: another one of those random acts of kindness I used to believe in so passionately. But now—” His voice broke. “I feel like I never want to do anything kind for anyone again! Not when this world is the sort of place where a man’s kindness is rewarded with brutality and ignorance. In the face of darkness like that, what difference does it make if I act for good or ill? Obviously, for the sake of my own sanity, I’d prefer to act for good, but from now on I think I’ll go back to doing it quietly, alone, away from people.”

"You’ve already tried that, Ro. Think back. Remember how lonely you were, making the only human contacts that mattered through your computer? For five whole years, no one but doctors ever laid a hand on you. You fought depression every minute of every day. Do you really want to go back to that? Living all alone in that beautiful house, with just your archives and a laptop for company?”

“Whatever it takes to be safe,” he answered.

“Safe won’t be enough for you, and you know it. You like people, and you need to be around them to feel whole.”

“That was true once, maybe, but those rotten bastards stole more than my guitar, Sarah. They also robbed me of my starry-eyed naivete, and I doubt it can ever be restored.”

“What a cynical thing to say! That ‘starry-eyed naivete,’ as you call it, was the sweetest, most beautiful natural innocence—”

“Natural innocence!” he snorted. “Well, whatever you might call it, it’s been raped out of existence. Now, instead of seeing good in every person I meet, I’ll only see a potential threat. What harm could they do me if I’m not cautious? I feel like I can never look at anything the same way ever again.”

“Even with the people you trust?”

“Oh, I can trust them, but still feel inclined to caution.”

“With me, too? And Sean?”

“You and Sean have higher places in my esteem than people I merely trust.”

“We do?”

“Yes. Sarah, you know me almost as intimately as I know myself, and Sean just worked very hard to pry my most fearsome secrets out of me. God knows I didn’t give in easily, even knowing all the troubles he has, and that he’d left his family at home for as long as it might take to break me free. And you knew he was the only person who might be able to talk some sense into me, and even though you were justifiably angry with me, you still wanted to do anything you could to help me. You went and fetched Sean, and that was the best thing you could have done. You’ve both proved how much you care for me, time and time again. How could I not hold you in the highest esteem?”

“But I slapped you and walked out on you, and I didn’t tell you where I was going. That certainly didn’t prove how much I care for you.”

“Maybe not in the heat of the moment, but listen, and I’ll give you my take on it. First off, I hadn’t been alone with myself in quite some time, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you knew I needed that. The slap—which I do believe I deserved—certainly shocked me out of my tantrum. I won’t deny that I was very angry with you at first, but you’d gone, and I couldn’t go after you, and I also couldn’t keep asking myself how you could have done such a thing for very long. So, there I was, with no more fuel for the fire, and no one but myself to bear the burden of my rage. Within a few minutes, it had utterly fizzled, and all I had left were my own dark thoughts. Lord knows I’ve been avoiding them, and self-examination as well, as much as possible in these last few weeks. That was easy, because I was never alone long enough to get to the root of it all. But in those two hours that you were gone, I passed a time of emotional torture in my own personal Gethsemane. I won’t share a synopsis of that—enough is enough! But please—I most humbly implore you to accept my apology. I really haven’t meant to be so awful, and it’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you’ve been doing for me. I do, a stór, and maybe more than you’ll ever know, but—I’m frustrated! Honestly, I never realized how much a man relies on his arms for so many little things most of us never even stop to think of. Balance and leverage, for instance. You’ve seen how hard it is for me to get out of bed, or up from a chair. I can’t push off, the way I normally would. I never even realized that I did push off like that, until I couldn’t. And this business of being totally inactive—Jaysus! I’ve never found it easy to sit still, even in the best of times, so this is really driving me ’round the bend.”

I put my arm around him and planted a kiss in the hollow of his neck. “I know it’s miserable for you, and I wish there was something I could do to make it easier, but I can’t alter reality. No matter what I do or don’t do, your arms won’t heal overnight. I wish they could. I wish I could bring that about, but—” Words failed me, and I sat up and looked at him helplessly, my hands raised, palms up, as if I expected some precious gift to fall into them.

“I know, a chuisle. I know. But please,” he repeated, “will you accept my apology?”

“Of course I will, but it’ll be easier to remember you offered one if you could try to be halfway pleasant to me.”

“Och, my dear, of course.”

He sounded husky again, and more than a bit congested, so I sat up and reached for the tissue box. Then I assisted him to an upright position and held a tissue to his nose. “Blow.”

Instead of grumbling about how much he hated it, he buried his nose in the tissue and meekly did as he was told, again and again until his nasal passages were clear. Then I took another clean tissue and gently wiped away his tears.

Afterwards, he tried to put his arms around me. He actually got them into the proper position, but couldn’t embrace me, and finally settled for resting his head on my shoulder. “Sarah?”

“What?”

“I realize this is a perfectly dreadful time to ask, but—is there any way—I mean, would you consider—”

He pulled back and sat up straight, his eyes locking mine. I felt his fingertips brushing against me, tickling, though clearly, given his serious expression, humor was the last thing he had on his mind.

“I told you I would, didn’t I? Before you went to talk with Sean?” And I pressed him back into the pillows, and let my hand slide down his belly to his sex. I’d already encircled it and begun stroking when he strained against me in protest.

“No, a chuisle, that’s not what I meant. I—”

His startled gasp made me laugh softly as I descended and took him into my mouth. The moments hung suspended in time, until at last he groaned and shuddered, and I felt him pulsing. Slowly, I crept back up to embrace him, and rested my head on his chest. His fingertips tickled me again, and beneath my ear his chest rose with the intake of breath.

“Thank you. That was lovely, Sarah, but not what I was trying to ask you.”

I raised my head and looked up at him. “No?”

“No.” He smiled. “Help me sit up again?”

So I did, and once more felt his arms loosely positioned around me.

Solemnly, his eyes locked on mine, but this time with a mischievous twinkle dancing in them, he quipped, “Sarah, I have this terrible feeling of déjà vu.”

I laughed outright and snuggled in closer. “Now, there’s the Ronan I know! Is he back to stay?”

“I certainly hope so! Anyway, Sarah, now that we’re back where we started, I still feel as if I’m doing this badly, but—a chuisle, I must ask, and please don’t feel as if you’ve got to give an answer right away, but—oh, damn!”

The bedside phone had begun to ring.

“I suppose you’d best answer that,” he sighed, and dropped back against the pillows.

“Yes, I suppose I should, though who in hell would call me this late at night?” I reached for the receiver, and with a burst of unexpected prescience, shivered.

***

C.P. Warner
© 14 October 2007

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