I told Barney how, totally by mistake, Paloma told me something about my mum who is dead. She’d heard about that whole terrible accident that killed my mum and hurt Stevie. And what she told me made me realize exactly how worthless I was.
In school, the day after I’d tried to kiss her, Paloma had called me over.
“Oscar, Oscar,” she’d shouted right in the middle of the school yard, and I ran over to her and she asked me to tell everyone what I had wanted to do to her the day before. And, of course, that was private so I wasn’t going to announce it to the rest of the class, but everyone had gathered around, and Paloma goes, “Oscar Dunleavy tried to kiss me last night, didn’t you, Osc?” And a few people started to laugh. And I laughed as well because I didn’t want it to get nasty.
So I laughed a bit more and so did she and then she leaned over and whispered in my ear. “See this, Oscar? Everybody’s laughing at you now. You didn’t honestly think that you and me were going to be, you know, that there was ever going to be an ‘us’? That’s not a possibility. That’s never been a possibility.” I told her that was fine with me, that seriously, she didn’t need to keep going on about it, but Paloma never stopped talking until she was ready to.
“I was being nice to you,” she continued. “And of course we can always be friends.”
“You don’t have to be nice to me if you don’t want to,” I said.
“Oh but I like being nice to you. On account of how brave I think you are.”
And I said, “Brave? What do you mean, brave?”
And she said, “I mean courageous. I mean strong. I can only imagine how guilty you must have been feeling for your whole life.”
“Guilty? Why should I be feeling guilty?” I’d asked her.
“Because of Stevie and your mother,” she’d said, slowly. “I honestly don’t know how you manage to stay so cheerful. You are resilient, Oscar—keeping going the way you’ve done since Stevie’s accident. Guilt must be such a difficult thing to live with,” she said, and the way she spoke was full of some kind of explosive meaning that I didn’t yet understand.
“You know, seeing him every day in his wheelchair, and knowing, that’s the awful thing, knowing that it’s you who put him there.”
“Paloma, what are you saying? It was an accident. A car accident. Someone crashed into us—it wasn’t even the man’s fault.”
“It’s always somebody’s fault,” she said, looking carefully at my face, and then she said, “Oscar, you don’t have to keep the secret from me, because I know. My mum told me. She had this long conversation with your dad the other night. You poor thing, Oscar. That’s a terrible burden to carry, and I just want to say maximum respect for being so okay about it, and for not letting it weigh you down.”
I told her I’d be very interested to hear the parts of the story Dad had told.
So then she told me the story. The story of my family that nobody had ever bothered to tell me even though it turns out I’d played the main part.
“Your dad told my mum the bit about how he’d been keeping his sorrow to himself for a long time. My mother is good at getting information out of people. I’ve seen how she does it. Usually she keeps filling up their wine glass even though they don’t want any more wine, and she gets them to tell parts of the story of their life that they’ve never told anyone.
“He told her the bit about how you and your family had been on the way to Galway, and how everyone was happy and excited because you were going to the beach. The sun was high in the sky because you’d started out late, and Stevie was strapped into his car seat and you were singing some song that you used to sing and you were only six but you were smiley and buzzy the way only six-year-old children can be, and your mum was driving. Your dad said he couldn’t remember why it wasn’t him who was driving. He explained the bit about how much you loved your brother, even then, when he was tiny, and he told my mum that Stevie must have been bored or maybe hungry or something, on account of you being late setting out. Your dad kept explaining to my mum that he should really have given you some lunch before you left but he was the one who insisted that you press on. And your dad is sure Stevie started to hold out his arms to you, because you said, ‘Mum, Dad, Stevie wants to get out,’ and your dad explained how he kept saying, ‘No matter what Stevie does, do not let him out of that car seat, not until we find somewhere to stop.’ I mean you were going to stop, but you were on the highway. You had to find somewhere, you see.
“He told her the bit about how your mum had kept on driving and he was reading the map and was distracted by something, and next thing he turned around and you have Stevie on your knee and the two of you have these huge smiles on your faces like you’ve done something really brilliant and you’re delighted with yourselves. As soon as he looks at you, he lets out this gasp, you know, because of how it’s so dangerous for a baby not to be strapped in. And then how your mum looked around and was equally shocked and took her attention away from the road and the car drifted across to the other side and hit a truck. The truck driver was devastated afterward, but it hadn’t been his fault.”
The whole time Paloma was telling me the story she was looking into my face.
I was dizzy. I was sick.
I wanted to find Meg. I needed to talk to her. But Meg wasn’t my friend anymore. She didn’t like me because I was an idiot. Everyone in my class knew it. Paloma knew it better than anyone. An idiot and a fool. An apple-tart-baking fool who killed his mother.
“I’m sorry,” I kept whispering to myself for the rest of that day, even though I really should have been talking to Stevie. “I’m sorry for what I am. I’m sorry for what I have done.”
Paloma was changing in front of my eyes. She was harder and tougher and meaner than I’d ever predicted, and I thought if I could only have a quick conversation with Meg, she might help me see straight.
But Meg didn’t want to talk to me. Meg had moved on. There wasn’t anybody I could turn to. Nobody who would listen or understand, and I panicked, Barney, because that’s the kind of feeling that happens when suddenly you feel like you’re on your own.
Lots of bad things were jumbling around inside my head. Everything kind of came crashing down. Does that make any sense, Barney?
Barney said that considering the things I’d told him, it made perfect sense.
“Oscar, my dear boy, I hope you understand that though you’re welcome to be here, perhaps you need to rethink the strategy you’ve planned about hiding indefinitely. It might be wise to consider going home at some stage. You are feeling bad about something that you shouldn’t be feeling bad about. And you’ll realize that if you think about it. You need to talk to your father about all of this.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t want to do anything anymore,” I said, and I put my head in my hands again and I would not look at him or talk to him for a while.
Barney said, “All right, dear boy, perhaps you simply need a little more time.”
“I don’t need any more time. Time is useless. It’s not going to make anything better, no matter how much of it goes by.”
“Why did you let Paloma talk to you and treat you the way she did?” he asked me. “It sounds to me as if she was being quite unpleasant, quite mean, quite deceitful.”
“Oh maybe she was, I’m not sure. I don’t think she meant any of it. I just wanted to be friends with her. I didn’t want any fighting. I wanted to keep the peace.”
“I may be a fairly dim-witted old man,” Barney said to me then. “But it seems to me as if that girl set out to make you feel terrible about yourself. One thing I’ve learned about peace is that not all of it is good. Peace can be fragile and peace can be ugly and peace can be wrong. Peace built on lies is no peace at all.”