‘At work today,’ she says, ‘I fell apart.’
The first thing I feel is disappointment. She should have fallen apart here at home because then I could let myself fall apart too and we’d pick one another up. Isn’t that how families are supposed to work, Angie asks? The ones that aren’t terminally dysfunctional, that is.
‘I had to visit this young girl,’ she goes on. ‘Same age as you. She’s had a child and there’s not much support at home. Her mother’s gone. Her father’s a complete waster. Her brother’s in jail. And this girl, she hasn’t got a clue how to take care of the baby. You know, proper diets and all that. As for budgeting her money, forget it. And yet she’s on cloud nine thinking this baby is going to put right everything that’s gone wrong in her life. And I know in my heart and soul it’s a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve seen it time and again. Her mother was exactly the same and it ended in a terrible mess and what can I do about it? Not a damn thing, it seems.’
‘At least she has someone to love,’ I tell her. ‘And it might work out. It’s working out fine for Win and her child. More than fine. The baby brought the whole family together. And her dad’s a totally changed man.’
‘It’s a very different situation, Eala,’ she says.
‘Because this girl you met is poor or something?’
‘Not poor. Or not only poor. But troubled, very troubled,’ she says, and I don’t like the worried expression that passes across her face as she stares at me. ‘I haven’t been paying attention to you, Eala. I’ve taken you for granted, haven’t I? Solid, sensible Eala.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘We’re all under pressure, Eala.’ Mam plays with her wedding ring, slides it off and on. ‘Today of all days.’
‘Today?’
‘This day last year?’ She gives me a quizzical look. ‘The accident?’
My legs can’t bear the weight in me. I sit down on the sofa beside her. How can I have forgotten this worst of anniversaries. The music of unaccompanied voices is starting to freak me. They sing a line that’s all harmony. Then there’s too long a pause before the voices come again and seem to clash. Another long pause and it’s harmony again and on it goes, pause after pause like they can’t catch their breaths, like they’re dying. I lean back on the sofa and close my eyes. I’m totally wrecked. I see the Ice Queen, hear her. You love too much … And maybe she’s right because for all my efforts I seem to be slipping further down Dad’s list of favourites below the Ice Queen and some guy I’ve never heard of called Alan.
‘Who’s this Alan guy he talks about?’ I ask. ‘His new best mate.’
‘He’s one of the clients at the Head-Up Centre,’ Mam explains. ‘His parents got the place up and running. You’ll meet them at the Christmas concert.’
‘The Christmas concert?’ I’m up on the edge of the sofa. I imagine Dad and the others acting out some childish nonsense on stage while we sit cringing in the audience. ‘Like some kiddies’ school show? No way am I –’
‘It’s nothing like that. It’s a fundraising concert,’ Mam says. ‘Some local acts and a raffle and that kind of thing. We have to support it.’
‘Will this Alan guy be there?’
‘Yeah. He’s a lovely fellow is Alan. Such a pity he may be moving on soon,’ she says, and I don’t like the sound of this.
‘Where’s he going?’
‘Well, he’s on the waiting list for a residential home in Limerick and there’s a good chance he’ll get a place there.’
‘They’re putting him away?’
‘It’s not some institution or anything, Eala,’ she says. ‘It’s a house for four or five people and there’s twenty-four-seven supervision and –’
‘Is that your plan for Dad too? Dump him in a home? I bet this is another of Miss Understanding’s bright ideas.’
Mam withdraws the hand she’d offered me. Her lips are purple and ugly from the red wine. She does a couple of those dopey exaggerated blinks that drunks do. Then she tries to glare at me all offended, except her eyes won’t stop crossing.
‘Jimmy’s not on any waiting list and even if he was, he’d be waiting for years there are so few places. Anyway, this is his home,’ she says. She lets her eyes close and stay closed long enough to get focused again. ‘And another thing – I wish you’d stop using that nickname for Fiona. She’s been a good friend to me and we need our friends. You do too. What’s happened between you and Jill?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We don’t agree all of the time, Fiona and me. In fact we disagree quite a lot, but that’s what friends are for, right?’
‘Like I don’t know anyone else besides Jill?’ I say. I can feel myself veering off into fantasy and I don’t stop. ‘Well, I do actually have someone.’
She blushes a little. I blush a lot. Angie thinks it’s hilarious. Another invisible friend, Eala, ha ha!
‘I’m glad,’ Mam says. ‘Am I allowed to ask who this someone might be?’
Then, for once in his life, Sean comes to my rescue. We hear the front door open and swing shut with a bang, his school bag hit the hallway floor with a thud. He’s home earlier than usual. Mam sits up, straightens her skirt and brushes a hand through her hair. She knocks back what’s left in the wine glass.
‘You have to talk to him,’ I say.
‘I know, I know.’
Sean opens the sitting-room door, but hangs at the doorframe. He floats somewhere between cheerful and smug. His iPod earphones pop and whizz. He looks from Mam to me and back again.
‘What?’ he asks too loudly and switches off the music. ‘What?’
‘Where were you?’ I say, jumping in because Mam’s way too slow about it.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Sean,’ Mam says.
‘But I’m not even late. What is this? Guantanamo Bay Interrogation Centre?’
‘Are you following Clem Healy?’ Mam asks straight up and she’s gone well beyond sober and on to Judy’s hauteur.
Sean turns to me. He does a few quick calculations in his head and the result is a filthy look.
‘You’ve been talking to Brian,’ he says. ‘Is that all you’ve been doing with him?’
‘Sean.’ Mam stands up too quickly and knocks over the wineglass. It rings and tinkles across the coffee table and when it hits the floor, the stem breaks neatly from the bowl. ‘There was nothing in it anyway,’ she says, all flustered with embarrassment and maybe dizzy too. She seems to have forgotten what the argument was about. ‘For God’s sake … for God’s sake …’
‘I’ve never touched that kid, Mam, and I never will. I swear,’ Sean says, and all she does is accept his promise with a nod.
He goes and gets his school bag from the hallway. As he passes the top of the stairs leading to Dad’s room, he pauses and looks down.
‘Well, Jimmy, how’s it going?’ he says.
‘Good, I’m good, it’s all good,’ I hear Dad say from below. ‘You coming down for a while? Play some Premiership?’
Sean taps his loaded bag.
‘Have to do some homework, Jimmy. Catch you later, right?’
‘Later. No sweat, Sean, no sweat,’ Dad says and it comes out like a descending scale of notes that might easily have fitted into Mam’s mournful choral music.
And it’s the saddest thing to see her face now, the saddest thing.
I should offer to take Sean’s place, but I don’t. As soon as I hear Dad’s door close down below, I escape to my room, to my bed. I turn off my bedside lamp. I long for sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I see Mam’s face. I pull the covers over my head like they’ll block out the image.
I try to think of other things and it’s the girl Mam spoke of earlier that comes to mind and Win and their babies. I think of the baby Mam might have had and how differently things might have worked out if Dad could have held it tenderly like
he held Richard that day in the Bernabéu. I see his face lighting up, his eyes brightening, his brain kick-starting as he realizes he’s a father. I see him sharing all the tasks having a baby involves, taking on the old responsibilities again and, nappy by nappy, bedtime story by bedtime story, becoming the man he once was, the father he once –
‘Judy?’
It’s Dad. I ease the duvet down from over my head. The door is wide open and Dad is silhouetted there. He’s got a bread knife in his hand. I’m frightened of him. Sick in my heart that I’m frightened of my father.
‘What’s the bread knife for, Jimmy?’ I ask, breathless with dread.
‘The Man might be about,’ he whispers. ‘I thought this was Judy’s room. I can’t sleep with Argos barking. I think that crazy lady next door puts him up to it.’
‘Course, she doesn’t.’
‘She does an’ all,’ he says. ‘She’s got it in for me. I’ve seen how she looks at me.’
‘Jimmy, why don’t I go down to your room and let you sleep here. That way you won’t hear Argos.’
‘No.’ He checks out the landing behind him. ‘I’ll pop into Judy’s. Which door is hers?’
He’s wearing football shorts and a black and white striped Juventus jersey. The house is cold and I shiver for him.
‘Better not, Jimmy,’ I say. ‘Tom’s in there and he’ll wake up if you go in. You know how hard it is to get him to sleep. Give me the knife, Jimmy.’
He wanders in, dragging his foot every few steps. There’s something rattling in his pocket. It can’t be matches, can it? He sits on my bed and places the bread knife on my duvet.
‘Have you got a box of matches in your pocket, Jimmy?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I’m hiding them. He might start a fire.’
‘The Man?’
He nods. I put my hand out. He reaches into his pocket and gives me the matches. He’s got that old ‘profonditées de l’existence’ expression of his. It reminds me of my innocence back then. There I was, imagining that look had something to do with his work. Figuring out some plot point. Chasing some new idea. I should’ve known it was just plain sadness, his past catching up on him, overwhelming him.
‘I’m fed up, Eala,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’
His shoulders are hunched and he fiddles with his watch. If he gets really agitated, I’ll have to pop him another downer, another sleeper too maybe. I’m trying to remember where I put the tablets. I’m in charge of them when Mam’s not around or when she’s tied up with Tom.
‘I don’t want to live here any more,’ he says. ‘I’ve stayed here too long. You can’t stay in the same place too long.’
‘Why?’
‘The Man,’ he says. ‘He’ll suss you out.’
‘Where would you like to live, Jimmy?’
He thinks about it for a bit. Whatever resentment I felt towards him evaporates as I watch his childlike indecision.
‘On a boat on a river, maybe,’ he says, which I find odd because he doesn’t seem to like the water when we go down to the River Walk. When we used to go down to the River Walk. Maybe this isn’t only some random thought of his.
‘Did you ever live on a boat?’ I ask.
‘I think so,’ he says. His eyes narrow in concentration. ‘Or was it a dream?’ The seconds counter on his digital watch can’t be right, it moves the time along so hesitantly. He presses one of the little controls and flinches when the watch beeps. ‘Maybe living on a boat’s not such a good idea. Water can catch fire, you know.’
I wonder where this latest obsession comes from, this fire thing. From his prison days or the years in residential homes? I know we’ve been told that the brain injury can make him imagine weird stuff. But I look at his worried frown and it seems to me that all these fears – the Man, fire, water catching fire – are the kinds of fears a very young child might have. I can’t help thinking that they might go right back to the time when he still had a mother. There are more secrets. I feel certain of that.
‘How much would it cost to go to Moravia?’ Dad asks.
‘A fair whack, Jimmy,’ I say, trying to keep things light because I’m this close to cracking up. ‘There’s four of us and –’
‘No, I’ll go on my own,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing but hassle with you lot. Always fighting and arguing and ordering me about.’
I’m gutted, pure gutted. Why do you keep letting me down, Dad? Can’t you see what you’re doing to me?
‘Or if Moravia is too expensive, I could go out to Alan’s house in Borris. It’d be nice to live out in the countryside. And Alan never fights with me.’
I slip back under the duvet and wait for him to go. A horrible, tense emptiness invades me. My legs feel like I’ve hit the wall in some endless marathon. The bed rocks lightly like a boat might when he lifts his weight from it. I hear him shuffle away, shuffle and drag. I hear the carpeted stairs sag step by step beneath him. The creak of his door when it comes might be in another house, it’s so far away.
The press above the fridge in the kitchen. That’s where I left Dad’s tablets. The trembling inside me is frightening. My heart races. I have to calm down. I need something to calm me down. One tablet. Just this once.
22
The Head-Up Centre prefab is a pure wreck of a place hidden away behind the old dance hall on Rock Street. The outside walls are stained with black damp, the windows wet with condensation that drips down and rots the timber sills. I’ve never been here before and already I hate it. Sean does too. Tom is cranky and clingy, which is his way of saying he’s not comfortable either among the Christmas Fundraising Concert crowd. Mam is all smiles as she floats around the reception area from one group to the next offering sausage rolls and chicken wings like a perfect hostess. Dad’s talking to his new friends. He seems perfectly content.
To one side of Dad is the strangely beautiful young man who, earlier on, poured the Coke we’re sipping at. He has this weird combination of deeply sallow skin and red-gold hair and eyebrows so dark they’re almost black above the hazelnut eyes. It turns out he’s Alan, Dad’s latest best mate. I don’t know why, but I expected Alan to be closer to Dad’s age. He doesn’t look much more than twenty-four or twenty-five and walks with a stick. Sitting in a wheelchair on his other side, is a woman who’s maybe in her mid-thirties. Her head moves constantly from side to side like she doesn’t have any control over it, but her gaze is fixed on Dad. She seems to find everything he says pure hilarious.
‘It’s a freaking freak show,’ Sean mutters.
‘Sean bold,’ Tom says. He’s hanging on my neck like I’m a banana tree and my ears are the bananas.
‘We’re here for Dad,’ I remind Sean. ‘Relax, will you?’ Which is easy for me to say because I slipped one of Dad’s anxiety tabs before we came.
Our conspiracy of silence over the prison story hasn’t brought us any closer. The opposite if anything.
‘Shut it, Eala.’
‘Sean bold,’ Tom says again. He might be a toddler, but he really knows how to get under his brother’s skin. He’ll keep this up until Sean spills over. Bold this, bold that.
‘Listen, Saddo, if you don’t zip it up, I’ll knock seven colours of shit out of you.’ Which is typically dumb of Sean because what else is Tom going to say but …
‘Bold, bold.’
Tom’s pointing a finger at Sean for all to see as he raises his voice, but there isn’t time for an argument to develop. I don’t know who this man approaching us is, but he smiles like we’re his oldest pals. He’s somewhere in his mid-sixties, greying at the temples. His coffee-brown linen suit is casual but expensive. He extends his hand to me.
‘My name is Peter Foran,’ he says. ‘I’m Alan’s father. And you’re Jimmy’s family, am I right?’
He shakes hands with Sean. I don’t know what to say. I leave it to Sean to come up with something. Not
a great idea.
‘What happened to Alan?’ he asks straight up.
‘I’m Eala,’ I say, trying to rescue the situation. ‘This is Sean. And the little monkey here is Tom. Say hello, Tom.’
“lo Tom,’ my little brother pipes up.
We all laugh. Peter tickles Tom’s nose and I wonder if he’s remembering his son at Tom’s age.
‘Five years ago,’ he says, ‘Alan was beaten up outside a nightclub in Dublin and left for dead. He’s come a long way since then. We all have.’
‘Did they ever catch who did it?’ Sean asks and I’m cringing at his persistence, but Peter doesn’t seem to mind.
‘Two of them left the country. Didn’t have the moral courage to face up to what they’d done. The third one served six months in jail and died of a heroin overdose last year. These people punish themselves in the long run.’
‘And if they don’t care what they’ve done?’ Sean says.
Peter shrugs. He’s so relaxed in himself, he reminds me a lot of the old Dad. Reminds me too of what Dad might have become, still managing to look cool in his sixties.
‘I spent the best part of three years fantasizing about how I’d make those people pay for what happened, Sean,’ he tells us. ‘Three wasted years. I wanted revenge, but I should’ve been asking what my wife and Alan wanted.’
At the far side of the crowded room, a woman speaks into a microphone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, can we all take our seats now in the Rainbow Hall. Our show begins in five minutes.’
‘No way am I going in there,’ Sean says as people file past us and along the corridor. ‘What are they going to do – the frigging Nativity or something?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I tell him. ‘You heard what Mam said. It’s a few local acts doing their bit for a good cause, right?’
But Sean isn’t listening. He’s spotted something or somebody up ahead and he’s not happy about it. We’re pressed forward towards the Rainbow Hall by the people following us. The corridor is too narrow for escape.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 13
