‘No,’ I said. ‘Why should I be angry?’
‘You have every right to be, Eala,’ she says, all sweet sympathy. ‘Your dad is, well, in many ways … for the present at least, very much a young boy and you’ve had to deal with stuff that no fifteen-year-old should …’
‘Sixteen-year-old.’
‘Who do you blame, Eala? Who do you want to punish?’
‘No one.’
‘Not even Clem Healy?’
‘He’s some kind of special needs case,’ I said. ‘So Mam tells me anyway.’
This is another thing people don’t get about Mam. How understanding she is – even of that little creep. She’s told me that Clem is one of these slow kids with all kinds of learning problems. She’s seen his file at the health centre. I don’t care what’s on his file. He ruined our lives. There’s no excuse for that.
‘Are you angry with Judy?’ the psycho goes.
‘No.’
‘Do you feel angry with yourself?’
‘Why should I be? I did nothing wrong.’
But I do. I do feel angry with myself. And with Mam. And with Sean. And Jill. And Brian. And almost everyone who crosses my path. These days, like Dad used to say about one of the guys he played five-a-side with, I’d start a fight in an empty room. But Miss U couldn’t drop it. She had to go and ask one last lousy question.
‘Are you angry with Jimmy?’
I got up and walked out of the sitting room.
6
Martin’s been here three-quarters of an hour and Dad still hasn’t made an appearance. Not a sound reaches us from the room below. Here in the sitting room, it’s getting harder to keep the conversation going. Mam tries to look interested as Martin finds another memory of Dad to fight off the silence with. This whole happy-memory thing bothers her. She’s told me so. For Dad’s sake we have to look to the future and not get stuck in the past, is how she sees it.
I don’t agree with her. I want to hear every last story about Dad. I disagree with her a lot of late, but keep it to myself. Whole conversations go on in my head where I’m defending Mam while Angie, the invisible friend of my childhood, is going, How come she never cries any more, Eala? or How come she spends so little time with him? I’ll have to stop doing all that Angie stuff. It’s too weird. Especially when her father’s sitting here in front of me.
Martin’s short and wiry and one of those people who’s always got a foot tapping or a finger drumming or a cramp in his neck to stretch out.
‘We were playing Clonmel Town in the last game of the season and we needed a draw to win the League,’ he says. ‘We’re a goal down and Jimmy calls me over and …’
Mam’s having trouble hiding her impatience with the fond recollections and I can see the silence from downstairs is getting to her. Martin gets the message.
‘Sorry, Judy, I’m talking nonsense,’ he says. He cracks a knuckle and it hurts him into more talk. ‘We never had a cross word, Jimmy and me. All these years. No, we had. Once. But we put it behind us.’
Mam’s high cheekbones dust over with crimson. It’s hard to tell whether she’s annoyed or embarrassed. This is fair awkward. The three of us sitting here trying to think of something to say that won’t fall flat. Martin tries again.
‘It’s bloody shameful how little there is for Jimmy in the way of services,’ he says. ‘How’s he supposed to get better without more rehabilitation and treatment and –’
‘He’s doing very well here,’ Mam tells him.
Sometimes she has this look that’s so, like, superior. ‘Judy’s hauteur’, Dad used to call it. She’s aiming it at Martin now and he doesn’t know why.
‘But if there’s anything I can do,’ he says. ‘You know, maybe get people in. Therapists, whatever. I can cover that, no problem.’
‘It’s not a question of money,’ Mam says. I don’t get why she has to be so sharp with him. Martin has stopped twitching. ‘Eala, can you see if Dad’s ready to come up?’
Martin looks at me as if to ask what he’s done wrong. I can’t help him. I get up and head for Jimmy’s room. As I go down the narrow stairs, I can almost feel the hushed quiet thickening below. I see the flicker of the TV under the door. It must be on mute. It’s hard to believe I’m creeping around our own house like I’m afraid what I’ll find next. I knock lightly on the door and go inside.
Dad smiles like he’s glad to see me. I feel this surge of pleasure. But hold on, I’m thinking, he’s just relieved it’s not Martin. Brian, halfway out of his armchair, is like a thief caught in the act. Sean is so pale, he’s actually a light shade of green.
‘Awright, Eala?’ Dad says. He’s whispering. ‘Is the Man gone?’
Sean’s head goes down in his hands.
‘The man is your friend, Jimmy,’ Brian says and I cut him a mind-your-own-business glare.
‘He’d like to see your new set-up here,’ I try.
Dad thinks about it. He’s fingering his watch. A little beep goes off, catching him by surprise. He stands up suddenly and all three of us are startled.
‘I’ve got to use the bog,’ he says.
He goes over to the shower room with that odd walk of his, the drag of his foot every few steps. At least he can’t lock himself in. There’s no bolt or key because he still gets confused, sometimes over the simplest things like unlocking a door. Once he’s inside, Sean starts up.
‘Every night he’s going, “The Man is in the house.” I ask him who the Man is and he says he can’t remember. Is it Martin? “I don’t know,” he says. I ask him where the Man is, which room? “Upstairs.” That’s all he ever says. “Upstairs somewhere”.’
Now that I think of it, Dad hasn’t gone further up into the house than the ground floor since he came home. I can feel Brian gaping at my side-face and it’s making me even more uneasy.
‘Are you moving in here full-time or what?’ I ask him.
I’ve never seen him blush before. I didn’t think he did blushes, but he does do quick recoveries.
‘Only if you want me to,’ he says and instantly regrets it. His blush is gone to puce. He can’t look at me and the Angie in me wishes that he would, wishes that he’d raise those brown eyes and see someone other than this hyper sixteen-year-old midget, someone he’d fancy.
‘I’m helping Sean out is all,’ he says. ‘And Jimmy.’
From the shower room comes the sound of the toilet flushing. Dad’s head appears from behind the shower-room door, a daft grin on his face.
‘My bleedin’ zip’s stuck,’ he says. ‘ I nearly caught my –’
‘OK, Jimmy, we get the picture,’ Sean says and goes over to sort Dad out.
The TV remote is on the floor halfway between me and Brian. I stare at it while Sean fumbles with Dad’s zip. From the corner of my eye, I can see that Brian stares at the remote too.
‘Has he left, Eala? The Man?’ Dad asks when Sean’s done.
‘He’ll be going soon,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to meet him. Maybe next time?’
Dad shrugs. I move towards the door and Sean follows me out. He closes the door behind him. Down here at the foot of the basement stairs, it feels like we’re at the bottom of a dry well. He’s standing there, avoiding my eyes.
‘What?’
‘Will you sleep down here tonight?’ he asks. ‘I need a break. I’m knackered.’
‘You mean you need to go out and get hammered. You and Brian.’
He leans back against the wall and it’s true, he is knackered.
‘It takes hours for him to get to sleep and that dog next door is driving me spare, barking half the night.’
‘OK,’ I say like it’s a problem for me, but it isn’t. ‘Don’t get twisted, Sean. Please.’
‘No way. I promised Mam. Thanks, Eala.’
When was the last time he thanked me for anything? Did he ever? I can’t remember.
‘We’re going to get Dad right again. One hundred per cent right,’ he says. ‘We have to.’ There’s this intense, scary edge to his voice that freaks me a bit.
‘Like any of us is ever going to be one hundred per cent again?’ I say, which surprises me as much as it does him. Sean thinks about answering, but decides not to risk his big night out on the town. He heads up the stairs and I follow.
‘I’ll go and check in with Mam before we head,’ he says.
Near the top of the stairs he stops dead. We both do. The sitting-room door is a few feet away and the door’s open a fraction. We can hear Mam.
‘Life doesn’t stop,’ she’s saying. ‘We have to move on beyond the bloody blame game.’
Martin’s voice is too low for us to hear. Whatever it is he says doesn’t please Mam. There’s a rawness in the air that cuts into my stomach when I breathe it in. Sean slips back down by me. Thanks, Sean.
‘The court case?’ Mam’s a decibel away from shouting now. ‘What difference will the court case make to any of us? None. None at all. They’re going to send some messed-up kid to jail for something like that? I don’t think so. And if they did, what good would that do?’
From the bottom of the stairs, Sean looks up at me. I’m thinking, If that kid gets off scot-free, Sean’s going to lose it. I reach the sitting-room door as it swings open and Mam’s shouting,
‘Eala!’
Then she sees me. She pulls me to her and it’s like falling against a wall, she’s so rigid. In the sitting room behind her Martin stands helpless, his shoulders hunched. He looks like he might have done in the first shock of losing Angie all those years ago. A question carved on his face that no one can answer.
7
‘Eala? You awake?’
I check the time on my mobile. Ten minutes past two. Sean’s not home yet. Mrs Casey’s dog is barking again. A hollow kind of bark with a whiny complaint at the end of it. Dad’s been tossing and turning since we turned off the light at half eleven. And talking. Not exactly non-stop, but in little unexpected bursts whenever I’m about to drop off to sleep.
‘Yeah, are you OK?’
‘Why does Argos bark all night? Does he think someone’s about?’
‘No.’ Three messages on the phone and I haven’t opened any of them. Tomorrow. ‘No. He’s too big a dog to be living in a small garden like that. He should be on a farm or somewhere out the country anyway. He’s like a prisoner in Mrs Casey’s.’
‘She’s a nutter,’ he says. ‘Did you ever see such a mad head on a woman in all your life?’
‘That’s not a nice thing to say about anyone.’
‘Even if it’s true?’
‘Especially if it’s true,’ I joke and wish I hadn’t. Dad chuckles.
Mrs Casey’s an odd fish. Mam grew up in this house and the old woman lived next door all that time and long before. Yet she treats Mam like a passing stranger. Her family used to have a big grain business in town and she’s never lost what Mam calls her ‘notions of grandeur’, even though all that’s left of the family fortune is the sweet shop. Her husband, Raymond, died shortly after she married back in the late forties and, to this day, she still wears black.
She’s well into her eighties, dyes her hair the maddest of colours – jet-black or red or lavender – and piles on the make-up like there’s no tomorrow. Because she’s so thin, she can still fit into the clothes she wore as a young woman in the 1940s. Square-shouldered jackets and coats, frilly blouses buttoned at the neck, a little hat perched on her feathery hair.
Dad, the old Dad, had always kept an eye out for Mrs Casey. He was the only person she’d allow inside her house. If he heard a loud thud in the night he’d check, first thing in the morning, that she hadn’t had a fall. He worried too about the electrical wiring in her house, but couldn’t persuade her that it might be a fire hazard. He changed light bulbs for her, fixed her kettle when it got clogged up with lime.
When, as often happened, she’d close the sweet shop and not stir out of her house for a week and more, Dad would be especially concerned. Some kid from the Centra supermarket would leave a bag of groceries at her front door every few days and she’d take it in under cover of night. Dad couldn’t rest easy until she emerged again and unlocked the shop.
Once in a while she offered some reward for his efforts. He’d come back to our house in fits of laughter with a little paper bag of chocolate sweets gone dusty grey with age or a bag of bruised and wrinkled apples. I used to be amused at her antics too, but not any more. Never once has she asked after Dad’s state of health since the accident. So maybe his calling her a nutter isn’t all that surprising.
The brush and sweep of his duvet as he moves seems weirdly loud in the quiet of the night. At least he’s not as agitated as he was earlier when he found out Sean wasn’t going to be sleeping in his room tonight. He wanted to know why Sean was going out and where he was going and when he’d be back. Mam tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen.
This was up in the kitchen. Supper time, we used to call it. We still do. In my mind, I’ve a different name for it now. Pill-popping time. And with every pill we get him to pop, it feels like we’re slowly poisoning him.
So, pill-popping time, and I was already in my dressing gown and slippers. Tom was there too, sitting on Mam’s lap. He’s still wary of Dad but, at least, he doesn’t lose it every time he sees him. In the space of a few weeks, my baby brother has morphed from a screeching, wrecking machine into a silent, apprehensive little boy. His usual sleeping routine has gone out the window. He won’t let Mam out of his sight. When she does finally get him to sleep during the day, he’ll wake as soon as she leaves the room and start to bawl. Not exactly bawl. It’s a stranger sound than that, like he wants to bawl, but is half afraid to. What comes out is a high-pitched whine with no volume or spirit to it.
So. We’re at the kitchen table. Dad refuses his usual glass of milk. He looks at the biscuits on his plate like he really wants to eat them, but is working hard not to let himself. Then he says,
‘Has Sean gone off me too like the rest of you?’
‘Course he hasn’t,’ Mam says. Tom’s arm is round her neck as it always is when Dad’s nearby. ‘I mean none of us has.’
‘Will you sleep down in my room tonight then, Judy?’ Dad asks.
I try to pretend this is normal. You know, like listening in on your parents’ private conversations is normal? I do a frozen wedding-day smile. A nutter smile.
‘It’s Eala’s turn tonight, Jimmy,’ Mam tells him.
He doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at me. Tom’s forehead slams into Mam’s cheekbone. I can see from the brief flash of anger in her eyes that it hurts.
‘You’ll be sleeping on your own soon like in the hospital,’ Mam says. Her sharpness, that almost casual tossing back of her hair, bothers me even yet.
‘Why do I have to sleep alone?’
‘Because … because the doctor said.’
‘Fecking doctor,’ Dad had muttered and we couldn’t help laughing. He’d always been a big Father Ted fan and loved annoying us with his fecking this and fecking that until we’d be screaming at him to give us a break.
‘Stop laughing at me.’
‘But you were doing that Father Jack thing,’ I said. ‘Remember? In –’
I stopped myself. But he wasn’t bothered at all. He laughed.
‘Father Ted,’ he said. ‘Will we watch Father Ted?’
‘Tomorrow, Jimmy,’ Mam said. ‘It’s pretty late.’
She was right, of course, because we can’t let him get hyped up before he goes to bed. Dad wasn’t happy. The best part of an hour passed before we got him to take all of his tablets.
‘Eala?’ He’s off again. It’s going to be a long night down here.
‘Yeah?’
‘Why did the kid crash into me? D’ye reckon the Man told him to?’
‘The kid d
idn’t mean to hit you. It was an accident.’ I hate this. Him sounding so weird. This obsession with the Man. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth it’s so dry. I need a drink of water, but if I get out of bed, he’ll be up too and we’ll never get to sleep.
‘Why do I have to be like this, Eala?’
‘Like what?’
I can sense him grasping hopelessly for the words to describe what it’s like to be inside his head. A child trying to catch soapy, rainbow-swirling bubbles without breaking them. His long sigh is like the breeze whisking the bubbles further from his reach. The words will come, I tell myself. Maybe not tonight but …
‘There’s more than one of me,’ he says.
He sniffles and I’m thinking, Please don’t start crying because if you do we’ll never stop.
‘This bed is very small,’ he says.
I sink back on to the camp bed. I close my eyes, which makes the room oddly brighter. I’m so tired. Argos is still barking and he sounds weary too. It’s easy to forgive Sean for staying out half the night.
‘Who’s with Judy?’ Dad asks and I don’t like where this is going.
‘Tom.’
‘What if the Man goes into Judy’s room?’
‘We have a good alarm system, Jimmy,’ I tell him. ‘No one can get into the house. Can we go to sleep now?’
It was maybe three weeks before Dad came home that the bed was delivered. We were down here and some guys hauled in the flat-pack and the special orthopaedic mattress Dad needs these days. The delivery men were very friendly and helpful. It wasn’t their job, but they put the bed together, unwrapped the mattress from its plastic covering and put it in place. I waited until they’d left before I said anything. I was blushing like hell. The sweat was ticklish under my arms.
‘It’s a single bed,’ I said.
Mam sort of rocked back on her heels like I’d slapped her in the face.
‘Eala, this is difficult to explain,’ she said. ‘I’ve talked about this with Fiona Sheedy and her advice is –’
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 4
