Another text rings in. Maybe it’s Sean, I’m thinking. It’s not. It’s Jill again. I don’t open her messages. I check the time. Nine o’clock and still no sign of him. Maybe he’s out there somewhere, wearing a flowing cape and Y-fronts over a pair of tights like one of his comic-book heroes, saving the universe from destruction. The Boy Wonder. Wondering where he’s going.
4
Half past ten. I head back downstairs. Mam and Dad are talking in the basement room below. I don’t hear what they’re saying. I close my eyes and try to pretend it’s a normal, adult conversation, but I can’t. All I can hear is the echo of Jimmy saying, ‘They don’t like me.’ Only a kid, I tell myself, and kids forget these things quickly, don’t they? Especially after they discover all the joys of a new room. The TV, the Xbox, the CD player, the treadmill exercise machine and all the rest.
It’s a half-basement, really. Some of it below ground, the rest above. So, it’s not like a dungeon or anything. Still, we hated the idea at first. The occupational therapist who came to give advice on Dad’s ‘living arrangements’ reckoned it was the biggest space available and it is.
Our house looks big from the outside but the rooms are actually small and it’s all a bit of a jumble with little stairs all over the place. The basement is one big open-plan space with windows to the front and back, and a door out to the garden. It’s actually the brightest room in the house and was more or less ready for use before the accident. And how weird is this? Dad fixed up the room himself.
‘I’m going stale in that workroom up there. I need a change of scene,’ he announced one day last summer. ‘So it’s either the basement or Paris!’
‘I’ll book you a flight on the Internet,’ I said.
‘And I’ll buy you a guidebook,’ Mam added.
‘Ha, ha. We’re all very witty, aren’t we?’
For three months Dad spent every spare minute down there. He knocked out a partition wall and dry-lined the outer walls. He put in a small shower room in the corner. Sean helped with the heavy work and I did some of the painting. Then we spent a few sometimes frustrating, sometimes hilarious days putting together the flat-pack shelving, and the new workroom was ready. But Dad wasn’t.
He kept saying he’d move to the basement when he’d finished the Terry the Tank series he was working on. Usually he’d dream up a character, work up five or six ideas and be done with it after a few months. There were times when he’d slow down and I’d know he was struggling to keep the work flowing. He wouldn’t exactly brood, but I’d notice him staring into the flames in the sitting-room fireplace for minutes on end. When I’d ask what he was thinking about, he’d put on his joky French accent and answer, ‘Ah, les profunditées de l’existence!’
But the problem with finishing Terry the Tank was down to a whole series of distractions. A couple of advert commissions came in that he couldn’t afford to pass up and the deadline for a pretty major book he’d been contracted to illustrate was brought forward. Then everything got totally complicated when his computer crashed and burned. Luckily he’d backed up most of his work, but it took ages to get sorted again on the new laptop. So, the Terry the Tank series will never be finished. Even if he remembered the book existed, he can’t draw any more.
I start tidying up the kitchen. Below the chair Jimmy sat on, there’s a layer of crumbs on the tiles. On the table his glass has left a pattern of milky rings like a wonky Olympic logo. I know it’s pure stupid, but I’m irritated by the mess. After the accident, I went from being carelessly untidy to this freaky ‘Housewife of the Year’ – complete with Dad’s apron. I can’t sit still in a room if it’s not spick and span.
Mam told me once about a client of hers who was obsessed with cleaning. She lived in a terraced house in Davitt Street that opened directly on to the public footpath. At least once a week, this woman would scrub the footpath like it was a floor inside her house. As soon as she did, of course, some young fellows would come and plaster it with mud or whatever. Sometimes at night, they even peed on it, but she couldn’t make herself stop cleaning it again. Now I know how that woman feels.
Mrs Casey’s German shepherd, Argos, starts up one of his howling fits next door. From outside the back door come hushed voices and scuffling noises. Sean and his boozing buddy, no doubt. I swing open the door and it’s Brian I see first. He’s tall, sleep-eyed and knows he’s good-looking. His early-Bob-Dylan-style mop of hair is always carefully tossed. In the school show back in that other life, he played the part of my adoptive father. He looks worried. In the shadows behind him Sean is wavering from side to side and taking a leak against the back wall. I smell the cider.
‘He hasn’t had much, Eala,’ Brian says. He’s staring at my front and I realize I’m wearing the mad apron. How sad am I?
‘Yeah right.’
Sean staggers over and falls against his best pal. The best pal who swooped on Jill while he was still thinking about it. Who’s dumped Jill and gone through a few more dumb bimbos in the meantime.
‘You’re totally right, man,’ Sean tells Brian. ‘I have to roll the sleeves up and … and …’
‘You’re not coming in here until you sober up, Sean,’ I insist, but he pushes me out of the way.
‘I’m all right, man,’ he says.
This ‘man’ stuff is always a sure sign he’s pure twisted. Brian puts his hand on my shoulder like he thinks he’s my new daddy in the school show again. Sometimes I hate being so small. I’ve had as much as I can take tonight. I take a swing at his face, but he catches my wrist before I make contact. He thinks he’s hurting me and I let him think it for a few seconds more.
‘Sorry,’ he says and as he releases me, my bracelet catches in his finger and breaks.
It’s a cheap string of blue beads, but I made it myself and I’m fair thick. He makes to stoop down and retrieve it, but I cut him off.
‘Get lost,’ I tell him and I slam the door in his face. Sean’s dodgy on his feet. He holds on to the table. ‘You’re such a loser, Sean. Make some coffee for yourself. And brush your teeth. Your breath stinks.’
‘What you go trying to hit Brian for?’ he says. ‘If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here, man. We talked it all out. I know what I have to do. Where are they?’
His head is slack on his shoulders until he hears their voices and it’s like someone’s thrown a bucket of water in his face and sobered him up. His eyes are half crazed. He makes for the kitchen door and I follow, trying to hold him back. He’s too strong for me. His voice is mild now, mellowed with hash.
‘It’s all right, Eala,’ he says. ‘I’m ready for him.’
‘Is that you, Sean?’ Mam calls from below as we scuffle down along the stairs to the basement.
‘You’re going to break Mam’s heart,’ I whisper fiercely.
‘No way, man,’ he mutters. ‘I’m going to make her proud of me.’
A few steps from the open basement door, Sean starts singing out loud.
‘Jimmy, Jimmy!’ Then he does the da-na na-na-na of the Undertones’ guitar riff and shouts again. ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’
‘Sean?’ I hear the trepidation in Mam’s voice and my stomach sinks.
We’re in the basement room. Jimmy’s gaping at Sean, his eyes filled with wonder and worry. Mam gives Sean a dagger look, but he doesn’t notice. He goes over to Jimmy and wraps his arms round him.
‘Jimmy, Jimmy!’ he sings. His eyes are closed. It seems like Jimmy’s holding Sean up now and feeling pure freaked. I give him a reassuring smile like this is perfectly normal and he has nothing to be afraid of. Sean releases him from the bear hug. ‘Hey, why don’t we play some Premiership on the Xbox, Jimmy?’
‘Yeah,’ Jimmy says. ‘Premiership?’
‘Football, Jimmy, remember?’ Sean says and then realizes we’re not supposed to upset him by asking if he remembers stuff. ‘It’s this new game. I’ll show you how to play. Bet you’ll demoli
sh me.’
Jimmy chuckles. He’s found his pal.
‘One game, OK?’ Mam says and it’s like her face is some kind of ceramic mask and it’s going to crumble any minute into dust or sand or whatever. ‘It’s getting late.’
So we leave them to it. I don’t believe in this new Sean and neither does Mam. We climb the stairs and it seems to take forever. We’ve had handrails put along each wall to help Dad climb. We need them now.
‘I can’t believe Sean’s gone and got tanked up,’ I say. ‘Tonight of all nights.’
‘I’ll have his life for this,’ Mam says.
She’s shaking. She holds on to the banister of the stairs with both hands. She presses her forehead against the timber so hard it must hurt.
‘At least he’s cheered Jimmy up,’ she says. ‘That’s more than I’ve managed to do.’
She lets go of the trembling banisters and pulls in a big breath.
‘We’re going to make this work, Eala. We have to make this work.’
Down in the basement, Sean and Jimmy are laughing their heads off. And I feel so stupidly jealous of Sean, I wonder if I should have tried the cider too.
5
When Dad was forty-two, he had lots of friends. His five-a-side football buds and people he’d worked with over the years. Mostly men. And sometimes I wonder if that’s why all but one of them dropped out of sight during his months in hospital and rehab. Maybe if hospitals served beer the men might have done better, Mam said. Pub-talk is easier to hide behind than bedside chat.
Ten, maybe, twelve of them called to see him. A few couldn’t bring themselves to visit a second time. Others stuck it out a little longer but eventually fell from the radar. I was there for some of these visits. It was pure torture. For everyone involved.
One guy’s voice seized up as soon as he saw Dad and, when he went outside, he completely fell apart. Pat Dillon, a big, broad-shouldered builder with muscle-packed arms, thought he was speaking normally, but what came out was a whisper none of us could hear. The ones who could speak usually talked about football and when that didn’t work, which was often, they were stumped. The fact that Dad had forgotten a lot of stuff about football didn’t help. He couldn’t remember the names of even the most famous players. Not even his hero, Zidane’s.
‘If they’re my jerseys,’ he’d asked us early on at the rehab centre, ‘why’s his name on them?’
Club names escaped him too. Real Madrid, Liverpool, Man U. Past games, who won what trophy in what year, and the complications of 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 and 4-5-1 or whatever, were a total mystery to him. But the real problem, when his old friends came, went deeper. Their visits left him in a sweat. Miss Understanding said it was probably ‘the effort of recollection, the sense of failure and confusion that got to him’. But I felt sure there was more to it than that. In their presence, he was nervous, even suspicious of them. After each one left he’d clam up for ages. And it was an uneasy silence. If he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, he’d watch the door, full of apprehension.
‘Why do those men have to come here, Judy?’ he asked one day.
‘They’re your friends,’ Mam said in her patient, this-is-not-too-weird-to-be-true tone. ‘They miss having you around.’
‘I don’t want them to come any more,’ he told her. ‘Especially Martin.’
We couldn’t figure this out. We still can’t. Martin Davis had been the closest of all these people to Dad. In a way, he was sort of a crossover friend. He’d known Mam since their school days. When Mam and Dad started going out together, Martin was one of the gang they hung out with when they came here from Dublin for weekends. After they moved down permanently, Martin brought Dad along to the football club he played with and they teamed up alongside one another in central defence. People used to think they were brothers. They had the same sallow skin and black hair. After Dad’s other so-called friends deserted him, Martin was the only one who stuck it out.
Mam must have felt fair lousy explaining the situation to Martin. It hit him hard. He drives around in a Mercedes and owns a pile of property but, as Mam said, you lose your best friend, you’re a kid again. He called to the hospital less often after that. When he did call, he never stayed for long. He hasn’t been to the house since Dad came home two weeks ago. Last night, Mam told me he’s coming over this evening.
‘Do you think Martin and Kathleen might have stayed together if Angie hadn’t died?’ I asked her.
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘He never got over Angie, that’s for sure. Threw himself into his work so he wouldn’t crack up. He was trying to forget the trauma of losing Angie, but maybe he forgot about Kathleen too.’
Angie Davis was born the same month and year as me. She died of leukaemia two weeks after her second birthday. I’ve no memory of her or of asking Mam and Dad where she’d gone to, which apparently I did over and over again. When other kids had invisible friends, I had Angie. Sometimes when I’d get into trouble over doing stuff I shouldn’t, I’d blame her. I’d tell Mam it was Angie who told me to draw on the walls or bring worms in from the garden to swim in the sink or whatever. She tried to get me to invent a different invisible friend, but I refused.
For some reason, Angie has come back to me since Dad’s return. I’ve actually built up a picture of her in my mind. She looks a bit like me, dark-haired but prettier – and taller, which wouldn’t be hard. And smarter in every way. And wilder, more streetwise. I imagine her telling me to loosen up, lighten up, grow up. I’m sure she’d have told me not to go into something so uncool as a school show and definitely not to wear that mad curly wig in public. I see her eating up guys like Brian and spitting them out when she’s had enough of them.
But Angie can’t distract me now, I feel so wired up about this evening. It’s like this is another test for Dad. Will he overcome his strange suspicion of Martin and of men in general? If it wasn’t for the strides Dad’s been making since he came home, I couldn’t even begin to hope that he might. But, to be honest, I’m wired up because of his progress too. The thing is I’ve had little or no part in it. For months I’ve been imagining all I’d do for Dad, all I’d do with him, how I’d devote myself completely to him. Instead, Sean’s doing all the work. And Brian, which really bugs me.
Every afternoon Sean’s buddie comes in by the door at the end of the garden and heads straight to Jimmy’s room. Which saves me having to avoid him. They play games on the Xbox and it’s definitely making a difference to Dad’s hand-eye coordination and his reaction speeds. We see it at the dinner table. Dad’s still hesitant when he picks up a glass and stuff, but he doesn’t spill or drop things so much.
And they don’t sit in front of the screen all day either. For an hour or so most days all you can hear from Jimmy’s room are grunts, groans, thuds and the whirr of the treadmill machine. They’re working Dad back into shape. He’s lost five pounds in two weeks. It doesn’t show so much yet except that his face is less puffy and his eyes are more alert somehow.
Nothing I’ve heard about Brian Dunphy prepared me for this. Not that I trust gossip. But when all the stories are more or less in agreement, you have to believe there’s some truth in them. Because his father is a detective sergeant, it’s like Brian has a licence to do what he wants and never has to worry about the consequences. Cider, hash, whatever you’re having yourself. He’s done his Leaving Cert. and doesn’t have a summer job, but he’s always flush. He also happens to be a notorious two-timer with only one thing on his mind and it isn’t love.
When Jill came over to watch a DVD the other night, I told her about his being here so often. I don’t know why I did. Maybe I needed a break from hearing about her sister’s baby and how her parents, being so religious and stuffy, can’t get their heads around the whole business.
‘Watch your back, Eala,’ Jill goes, looking up from painting her fingernails. She’s no airhead, but she’s so into pink and all the frills that go with it.
‘He’s on the loose again. He’ll be sniffing.’
‘Do I look like a moron?’ I said and turned the DVD back on to cover up the blush that swept across my cheeks for no reason I could think of.
‘I’m only saying. He hasn’t gone out with anyone for a few months,’ Jill said. ‘Not that anyone knows of anyway. Then again, he’s good at keeping secrets. I learned that the hard way.’
‘Maybe everyone’s copped on to him,’ I said.
‘I’m serious, Eala,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to get involved with that guy.’
This is Jill at her most annoying. The drama queen. You’d think she was a thirty-five-year-old on her third divorce. I should be at the cinema with her tonight. We always went on Friday nights. Used to. It’s a while since I’ve gone. She keeps asking and I keep making excuses and Mam keeps wondering why. ‘Do you fancy sitting through some dumb romcom for two hours?’ I ask her.
The truth is I never want to leave the house these days. It’s like I have to hang around twenty-four/seven so I can snatch even a few minutes with Dad. Besides spending all his waking hours with Sean and Brian, he insists on Sean sleeping in the room with him. He doesn’t like to be alone at night. I shouldn’t blame Sean, but I have to blame someone.
‘Do you feel angry about what’s happened?’ Fiona Sheedy asked me a few days before Dad came home.
We were in the sitting room and I was pretending to do a sudoku puzzle while she and Mam talked. It was one of those pure obvious set-ups where Mam is there one minute and then she’s gone to check on Tom, even though I know he’s fast asleep. I was thick at her, but I stayed put. Unlike Sean, who makes himself scarce every time Miss Understanding arrives.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 3
