‘Everywhere You Go’ by Miriam Needham

That morning, before he’d left, when he’d still been dithering about leaving, Clare had said to him, ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t see him now, take it from me.’ Clare’s father was already dead, so she had the upper hand in this matter. But Feidhlim had thought to himself, walking past the mural of Maud Gonne on the way to the train station, I’ll regret it if I don’t see him, and I’ll regret seeing him too.

Now he is sitting squashed into a four-seater surrounded by three young ones all on their way to Maynooth. He knows they’re on their way to Maynooth because they won’t fucking shut up about it. They’re not even past Collooney yet and he’s already heard about the lecturers they fancy, the assignments they’re avoiding, the recent house party that ended in a broken staircase. He keeps his arms folded over his belly, watches the cows going past, the field full of swans. Every now and then he’ll go to try and stretch the discomfort out of his legs and accidentally nudge the blondey one opposite him. When this happens, she says ‘Sorry,’ and does a small giggle, although what the fuck is funny about anything Feidhlim has no idea. There’s a pink-haired one sitting beside her who is chewing gum with her mouth open. The girl sitting directly beside Feidhlim seems to have more elbows than she knows what to do with, and his shoulders tense up every time she crosses the border into his space.

‘Carly shifted a priest by the way,’ says Blondey.

‘G’way,’ says Pink Hair, her chewing gum almost falling out of her mouth.

‘She did. The two of them mauled into each other in the smoking area of the Roost. It’s that priest who’s in the drama soc, y’know yer man who does all the musicals, lanky fella. He seems gay but he shifted Carly, so.’

‘Maybe he’s bi,’ says Elbows, ‘Maybe he’s a bisexual priest. Fuck I’d love to shift a priest. Imagine like.’

‘You’d see god.’

‘Holy heaven above.’

‘He’s not a priest though is he, he’s only a trainee priest, he’s only a seminarian.’

‘Does that mean he’s allowed shift girls so? Just ’cause he’s not finished his course yet is it?’

‘Ah no, probably not, he’s probably still meant to be all chaste like. Maybe he’s not even meant to be doing musicals.’

‘Carly’s doing the Lord’s work I say, if she keeps at him she might save him from a life of boring altar duty.’

‘My Granny’s friend is a nun and she fucking loves it, she lives in Zimbabwe, she has a fucking great time—’

Feidhlim is trying his hardest not to tell them to shut the fuck up. They seem to be getting louder as the journey wears on. He eyes the seats around him, in case anyone got off in Ballymote (no one gets off in Ballymote), and of course no, it’s still packed. They’re not even past Carrick yet, it’ll be two more hours of this shit. He’ll have to try some mindfulness or something, he doesn’t want to end up being filmed. You used to be able to talk to people, you used to be able to say, excuse me, would you mind, but Feidhlim thinks now that if he tries to ask these wreck-the-heads to keep it down a bit that they’ll take out their phones and start filming him, put him on tiktok or whatever, talk about men always taking up too much space, fucking mansplainer manspreading or something. Young women are always right now, they can’t be wrong.

‘I’d love to go to Zimbabwe,’ says Blondey, ‘Maybe I should become a nun.’

‘But then you’d never get the ride.’

‘You wouldn’t survive.’

‘You’d die.’

‘You’d be dead.’

‘Dead to bits.’

‘I’ll stick with psychology so.’

They pass Carrick. Dromod. Longford. The girls haven’t taken a breath yet, they’re non-stop wanging on, and Feidhlim’s irritation is building steadily inside him, so much so that he really is about to shout at them to shut their fucking holes when he sees Blondey’s phone light up on the table in front of him, saying: DAD calling. He feels his breath catch in his throat. She picks up the phone and answers, and there is a softness in her voice when she says: ‘Hi Dad. Yeah, it’s grand, I have it with me. Yep. Yeah. I’ll message you when I’m back. I will. Okay.’ There is a softness in her face too, and there is a softness generally, between her and him on the phone, she seems almost like a child again.

Feidhlim feels the irritation that was building up inside of him dissipate completely, and there is only a coldness inside his chest, an ache.

 

The grief that sits inside your belly your whole life, never getting lighter, just settling in more comfortable around your organs, just part of your every-fucking-day, put it on your toothbrush in the morning and spoon it into your tea, take it with you every-fucking-where, run off to Australia, go on, find yourself, trouble is that Feidhlim can’t get away from himself, can’t get away from the hole that is inside him, the hole that means he is only half-human, only half-a-person. That fucking hole. You can never go home. But you can never get away from it either. All those rooms he grew up in are still inside in his ribcage, trundling around, that kitchen, that hallway, every chair, every corner, every patch of curling linoleum (he can see the concrete underneath, he fell there, scratched his knee), boiler broke again and hallway flooded. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about, his father used to say. Locked him in the wardrobe sometimes to teach him a lesson. But what did he ever learn in there, only his own worthlessness? How little he mattered, how insignificant he was? All the hours he spent in that wardrobe, listening to the mice in the walls, just himself and the darkness, hugging his knees into his chest, digging his nails into his calves. One time he heard the front door close, and he knew it was only him in the house then, just him inside in the wardrobe. Hours before they got back. Afraid he would be in there forever. No, you can never get away from all of that. It comes with you, wrapped up inside you. Every square of carpet, every patch of linoleum. You just fold it up inside you and carry it with you everywhere you go.

 

Suddenly, Mullingar. Feidhlim has lost track of time. A tiredness has fallen over him, a heaviness. Now that he is feeling more subdued, quieter inside himself, the girls have actually calmed down. Somewhere around Edgeworthstown they took out their phones and have been locked into them ever since. As the train winds and slows alongside Mullingar station, he watches the people on the platform. Students, commuters. People with wheelie bags who could be going anywhere. There is a little girl chasing pigeons while her mother and father watch, a buggy and about five bags between them. The girl shrieks with delight every time a pigeon flies away. She starts crying when her mother picks her up to board the train, and Feidhlim is glad when they enter and go the opposite direction into the carriage in front of his, so that he won’t have to hear the child cry, and so that he won’t have to see the mother comforting her.

The train moves off again. Newly arrived passengers walk the aisles, looking for their seats. Feidhlim’s phone buzzes with a text from Clare. It’s a photo of a coffee cup filled with used teabags and multiple spoons sticking out of it. She has captioned it ‘Public art’. She is at a visual arts conference and is trying to make him laugh. Feidhlim’s face does not move when he sees the photo but he reacts with a laughing emoji anyway. Clare is freelance, and most days are her own schedule, but every now and then there are work days that are immovable. She’ll join him tomorrow evening, to squeeze in with him in the single bed in his sister’s spare box room. Until then, he knows, she will probably continue to send him regular texts, memes, thoughts, anything, just to check in.

He notices a text from his sister from earlier that he somehow missed: Are you en route? He types: Yes. I’ll be at St. John’s around 1pm. She replies almost immediately: Great. I’ll already be in with dad. Just ask at reception and they’ll bring you down. He sends a thumbs up and puts his phone on the table, looks out the window at the Royal Canal. Glimpses of people he’ll never see again, walking dogs, cycling, running. Feidhlim’s sister has in fact seen their father in the last few years. She has always had the ability to like people, in spite of things. Although in fairness, she got off lightly. Born late enough to escape their father’s more energetic years.

His phone lights up with another message from Clare: a photo of the sky, taken from the top of the steps, just outside the arts centre. Pink and red and orange. It must have been one she took that morning, before going inside — she is scrolling through her photo album, looking for things to send him. He reacts to it with a heart, tries to think of something to say to reassure her, stalls, then eventually types: Have you been schmoozing?

I have become a hobnob, she replies. I have been hobnobbing no end.

Clare is typing. She stops. Then: Let me know how you get on xxx.

He clicks his phone screen off, and this time puts it in his pocket. Sometimes he thinks he is still there, inside that wardrobe, and she is knocking on the door.

How easy it would be, Feidhlim thinks, to hurt this man now, this man lying weak and helpless in a hospice bed. How easy it would be to frighten him.

 

At Enfield, no one gets off. People pile on and grumble, look at the seat number on their tickets and frown. Some people say, ah, that’s my seat, actually, but most of them just accept their fate and stand. Feidhlim goes to stretch his legs, nudges off Blondey’s foot again, he says sorry, she does too. Elbows laughs suddenly and loudly at something on her phone. Pink Hair yawns, still with the chewing gum in her mouth. Blondey stops scrolling then and puts her phone on the table, face up. Feidhlim can see that her wallpaper is a picture of her with the other two, all clutching each other on a night out. She rummages in her bag and takes out a vape. She looks around for train staff, then covers it with her hand as she sucks on it. About as subtle as a brick. Passes it around to the others. They’re all trying to hide it, passing it to each other under the table, holding it in a strange way with their hands cupped, as though its not totally fucking obvious they’re vaping on a train. Elbows makes a big show of hunching over, as though she could hide the vape using her elbows alone, and then passes it back to Blondey under the table. Feidhlim can’t help himself.

‘No thanks, you’re grand, I’m okay,’ he says.

They look completely shocked and then completely delighted and then giggle and look at each other like Oh My God, Do You Hear Him Like.

‘You can have some if you want,’ says Pink Hair, her eyes sparkling, ‘You’re welcome to have a bit of it like.’ She’s kicking Blondey under the table. She offers the vape to Feidhlim, arm stretched out across the top of the table this time, not even a bit of shame about it. Feidhlim shows her the palm of his hand, a gesture of No-thanks-I’m-grand. Then, after a beat:

‘Them things’ll kill you, y’know.’

They erupt in laughter again, and Feidhlim thinks that maybe he’s being laughed at, more than them actually finding him funny. Blondey kicks him when she’s laughing, accidentally he thinks. Despite himself he feels some warmth coursing through his ribs, some kind of pleasure in their attention. When they get up and leave at Maynooth they are replaced by people who don’t know each other, who don’t talk to each other, and he almost misses them.

He takes out his phone, sends Clare a heart emoji. It comes up as a large icon on his screen, pulsing in front of him. He takes a photo of the view out the window: a blur of suburb, grey and green and blue and mauve. He sends this to her too, captioning it: ‘Public art: Pale edition’. She isn’t online, but he knows she’ll see it soon, and reply as soon as she does. Clare loves him, even though she knows him very well. This surprises him, still, sometimes, when he thinks about it.

‘I don’t think I can love properly,’ he’d said to her once, a few months in, late into the night, drink taken.

‘You’re breathing, aren’t you,’ she’d replied, ‘If you can breathe you can love.’

Alcohol-fuelled shite talk, he’d thought the next day, but it comes back to him now for some reason, and he thinks of his father in the hospice, how his breaths might be lengthening, the space growing longer between each one. Is he scared now, this man? Is he scared for what’s next?

The train slows into Drumcondra. Feidhlim grabs his bag from the shelf above his head and alights onto the platform. His legs feel strange as he goes down the stairs, blood flowing again. The air outside is fresh and crisp. The sound of the city floods him: immutable Dublin. Two seagulls are eating from a bag of chips in front of Centra. He walks north, making his way out of the city and into the suburbs, towards the hospice. He could get a taxi but he wants to walk, he wants to move. He passes Croke Park, St. Pats, up the hill to Glasnevin, closer and closer to St. John’s. He knows that his sister will try to make him feel comfortable, make chit-chat to fill the silences, welcome him as warmly as she always does, no matter how long it’s been, no matter how little of himself he has given. How easily she forgives. She doesn’t hold onto the rage, doesn’t let it consume her, the way Feidhlim does, the way their father did.

But his father, he does not know how his father will be. It has been so long since he has seen him. He does not know what time has done to this man, what parts of him have been exhausted, what parts of him have remained. But he knows that he is weak, and he is dying, and that change comes to us all, eventually, whether we like it or not, that change is unavoidable, like regret, like death. And as he walks up to the doors of St. John’s, he feels an unfolding in his chest. His linoleum heart, peeling at the edges. Despite everything, this gentle heart.

 

Miriam Needham is a writer from Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim. Her short stories have been published in Banshee and HOWL New Irish Writing. She took part in The Stinging Fly Six Month Workshop 2023/2024 and was one of 39 writers selected to participate in the Irish Writers Centre National Mentoring Programme 2024. She is working on her first collection of short stories.