The Rachel Incident

by Caroline O'Donoghue

I was in love, or so I thought. My trouble was getting people to take it seriously. I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously.

It’s not that we weren’t capable of warmth, as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged.

“I never asked you to call in sick,” I said. “Or wear the same clothes for four days in a row.” “I know you didn’t, pet,” he said. He touched my face, grazed it with the back of his knuckles. My rage flowed away and I pressed my cheek into his hand. “But you’re very young,” he continued. “You’re still doing the student thing. And why not? It’s a laugh! But it takes so little for me to slip back into that. Sleeping till noon and all the rest of it. I’ve no self-control.”

“If he was anyone else in the world,” I said to James one night, after looking at my phone for the fiftieth time, “I’d tell him to go fuck himself.” “But he isn’t anyone else in the world,” said James, warm sadness rising in his throat.

The words “commitment,” “commitment issues” and the decidedly medical “commitment-phobe” were thrown around constantly, so much that I forgot what the word meant, which was usually just about having someone sleep over a lot and occasionally go to weddings with you.

I was terrified of appearing ungrateful, so instead I said nothing, and just became resentful.

The problem with genuine memories is that you know too much. It ruins everything. I can love that night for what it was, but I also know this: that I would only step inside that house two more times, and by winter I would never see Deenie Harrington again.

“I always heard New Yorkers were rude.” “You hear that, but they’re just rude compared to other Americans, I think. They’re friendly compared to Europeans.”