Brian shifts about in his seat and takes out a small, flat, gift-wrapped package from the inside pocket of his jacket. He places it on the table beside my cup.
‘Something for Christmas,’ he says. ‘I hope you like it.’
‘But … I don’t have anything for you.’
‘I don’t deserve anything,’ he says.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘I can be a drama queen too, can’t I?’ he says with a smile. ‘Are you going to open it?’
I do. Very awkwardly. My fingers like scissors ripping the paper apart. A silver bracelet and much more expensive than the beaded one he broke so long ago I’d forgotten all about it. This one will break too, Angie says. Everything breaks. And whatever there is between you and Brian, that’ll break as well when he gets tired of your sob stories and of feeling sorry for you and your dad. But I shout her down in my head. I’ll take this, I tell her, and I don’t care whether it’s love or pity because I can’t get by on my own.
‘I don’t know what to say, Brian.’
He shrugs. I don’t know what to do. I get inspiration from Romeo and Juliet at the next table. I lean over and kiss him on the lips.
24
I’m dancing with Dad. The foxtrot. We’re in his room and the music is from way back in the past. From before my time, from before his time. Some old swing orchestra. I’ll never be dancing champion of Moravia, but at least I’ve distracted him for a while from his latest obsession.
After that memory came back to me at the cathedral, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Christmas would really freak Dad out this year. I was wrong. He loved every minute of it. Even came upstairs to play Santa Claus to a sleeping Tom, arranging his presents by the end of the bed, drinking the milk Tom had left out for Santa and breaking off a chunk of the carrot left for Rudolph. I knew it wouldn’t last. I felt so edgy I took another of Dad’s anxiety tablets to stop my insides twisting into agonized knots.
Christmas Day he was beside himself with joy at all the stuff he got. A football signed by Roy Keane that Martin had bought at an auction and God knows how much it cost. Mam gave him a new parka jacket, a wool-lined hunting cap with ear flaps and a pair of strong walking boots. That’s Mam. Practical. I got him a retro Brazil jersey with ‘Pele’ and the number ‘10’ on the back. But it was Sean’s gift that caused the most excitement in Dad on Christmas Day and the most consternation for the rest of us in the days following Christmas.
Dad never liked tennis. ‘There was a time,’ he’d often said, ‘when at least the players had some kind of personality.’ John McEnroe with his tantrums, Billy Jean King with her in-your-face feminism. Nowadays the players were machines, the matches as predictable as sunshine in the Sahara Desert. Since he got the Wii console from Sean, football has taken second place to the sport he once despised.
How Sean came up with the money for the game was a mystery to us. More than a mystery, a worry. So Mam asked him straight up. She tried to be pleasant about it, but too obviously so.
‘That must have set you back a few bob,’ she said. We were in the kitchen washing up after the turkey dinner. From below we could hear Dad’s loud grunts as he served. ‘I didn’t realize you had so much left in your account.’
‘I sold some of my stuff on eBay, right?’ Sean said.
‘Two hundred and fifty euro worth of stuff? Yeah, right,’ I said.
‘You bought him a lousy T-shirt, so I’m supposed to give him some cheap crap as well, is that it?’
‘It’s not a T-shirt, it’s a jersey. And it wasn’t cheap, actually.’
‘Lads, please.’ Mam wore her martyred expression. As well as everything else, it implied, I have to put up with you two bickering. ‘And mind those bowls, Sean, please.’
He’d been putting way the delph and looked like he was ready to fling the last soup bowl at me. In the basement, Tom cheered. Another wicked shot from Dad, no doubt.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Sean said, ‘I sold a bunch of Dad’s Judge Dredd books and comics. I got forty-five euro for one of them alone.’
‘You’d no right to sell Dad’s stuff,’ I said.
‘My stuff, that he gave to me.’ Sean banged a finger on his chest. ‘Not you, me.’ Meaning, He told me his secret, Eala, and not you.
‘Look,’ Mam put in. ‘All I’m saying is that maybe we should have discussed what we’d get him for Christmas. I know that game keeps him active, but he gets so aggressive when he’s playing and we need to keep him calm.’
‘OK then, I’ll take it back from him,’ he said, heading for the kitchen door. ‘I’ll tell him it’s not for zombies. I’ll bring him over to the Head-Up Centre for a game of Tiddlywinks.’
‘It’s Christmas, Sean – they’re closed,’ I said and Mam didn’t appreciate my sarcasm.
The kitchen door opened and in ran Tom, pink with excitement.
‘Jimmy win,’ he cried with delight.
Then Dad was peering in at the door and he puts on this posh English accent.
‘Anyone for tennis?’
All day, every day he plays. He’s the unbeaten champion of the house. We never let him lose. We know better. He loses the rag, shouts at the screen if a ball is called out at a crucial stage of a match. He plays like he’s on a real court, lurching awkwardly all over the place and because he’s such a big man, stuff tends to break when he thrashes about. He’s knocked a picture off the wall, the bedside lamp twice and a small vase of Christmas hyacinths from the dresser.
We’ve tried everything to distract him, but he’s always got some excuse. When we got out the Father Ted DVDs again, he said he couldn’t understand the actors’ accents. When I tried to bring him for a walk by the river, he goes, ‘What if I fall in? I might drown, you know.’ When Sean tried to coax him out to the Bernabéu to play football, he said the ground was too mucky.
So today I’ve tried something different. I’ve put on the Ballroom Dancing for Beginners DVD he got from the Ice Queen for Christmas. With afection, Marta. Two f’s, Blondie. We’ve spent the best part of an hour working on the foxtrot. At first, I felt completely strung out. Aching with tiredness but telling myself I had to go on. Then I started to enjoy the dancing. Dad was totally focused, if not exactly graceful. Now his attention is wandering and he’s beginning to get thick with himself. Soon, he’s blaming me.
‘You stood on my flippin’ toe, Eala.’
‘Your toe shouldn’t have been where it was,’ I joke.
‘It’s on my foot, where else can it be!’
We move off again.
‘Left, not right,’ he says. ‘We turn left.’
‘Sorry, Jimmy.’
‘Marta’s way better than you are,’ he says. ‘I’m fed up of this.’
There’s an odd delay in my brain. His words should be hurting me. They don’t. Not straight off. Maybe it’s the tablets. The more I take, the more I need to take, it seems like.
‘OK, let’s leave it,’ I say. ‘We’ll try again later.’
‘Best of three,’ he says, picking up his Wii console. When he says three, he doesn’t mean three games or three sets, he means three full-length matches.
‘I’ve to meet someone,’ I say.
‘Two, then?’
‘I’ve to meet someone.’
All of a sudden, it’s like I want to tell him something real about my life, tell him I’m going out with someone. Which is kind of ironic because the last time I had a boyfriend was before the accident and I tried so hard to hide the fact that it was blindingly obvious to him and Mam what was going on. The teasing he gave me. I wanted that teasing now, that normality again, so badly. ‘I’ve to meet someone, Jimmy.’
‘All right then, one match,’ he says.
‘I’ve to –’ I stop myself. ‘OK, but no jumping around, Jimmy, right? You’re wrecking the place.’
‘No sweat. I bags first serve.’
‘You’re not trying,’ he complains.
He starts to get clever. Lobbing easy shots back at me instead of smashes that steer the ball clear of my lousy backhand. Filthy looks fly at me when I whack the ball into the stands or completely miss it. The agitation begins. He’s fiddling with his watch between serves. He starts slamming the ball hard again. Once, twice he launches himself at the virtual ball.
He takes off for a third time and trips on the edge of the Moroccan rug. He hits the bed. The bed collapses loudly on the floor like a bomb’s gone off. He’s not hurt. He looks around at the damage and then looks up at me. A smile. A big, stupid, mad smile and big, stupid, pleading, don’t-tell-on-me eyes. Outside on the stairway, there’s a race to the bottom. Mam wins. First at the open door, she can’t contain herself.
‘Jesus Christ, what’s going on down here?’
She sees Dad sitting on the broken bed. Her hands knead their way through her hair.
‘It was my fault,’ I say.
‘Yeah, it was Eala’s fault,’ Dad says.
Mam doesn’t believe him and he knows it. He struggles to his feet and when he gets there, his expression has changed to defiance.
‘I don’t like that bed anyway,’ he says. ‘It’s too small.’
He’s staring hard at her. She tries to match the stare, but after a few seconds her head snaps to the side like a bird’s. I get this terrible sinking sensation because I know what’s coming. Behind Mam, Sean’s afraid to come inside. At least Tom is having his nap and not here to witness this.
‘I’m taking that game out of here this minute,’ Mam says. ‘We’re all sick to death of this messing.’
She takes a step towards the Wii console by the bed. Dad blocks her path.
‘No way,’ he says. ‘It’s mine.’
He stoops down and gathers up the console and the controls.
‘Jimmy,’ she says and not kindly, ‘Give me those. Give me those right now. You’ve caused enough damage already. I won’t let you ruin our Christmas.’
His arm shoots up. I gasp. But he’s only pointing at her.
‘You don’t want me, Judy,’ he says. ‘You won’t let me into your bed.’
‘Jimmy, please don’t,’ she says.
Sean sinks on to the last step of the stairway. Mam reaches to take the console from Dad and he backs away.
‘You promised,’ Dad insists. ‘But you never did.’
‘Give me the game,’ Mam says. ‘Give me the game. Give me the game.’ The pitch of her voice is rising. I know how she feels. When there’s nothing left to say, all you can do is say the same thing over and over again. ‘Give me the game.’
‘Mam, leave it,’ I say.
‘Jimmy, if you don’t give me that game,’ Mam insists. ‘I’ll …’
Sean charges out from behind her and makes for Dad.
‘Give her the frigging game, Jimmy,’ he shouts and he grabs at the console in Dad’s hand. There’s a tug of war, a rough dance. They’re pushing at one another. ‘I’ll clock you, Jimmy. I swear I’ll clock you.’
‘Clear off,’ Dad warns him. ‘Or you’ll regret it.’
The flush of anger is gone from Mam’s face. She’s pure pale. Her mouth’s twisted up on one side like she’s had a stroke. A strangled whimpering rises in her.
‘Lads, stop it,’ I say. ‘Please, stop it.’
As they struggle, the point of Sean’s left shoulder catches Dad on the nose and he reels back. He drops everything and throws a punch at Sean’s chest. Sean catches him with a right to the stomach that tips Dad over the edge. It’s a wrestling match now. They tumble on to the floor. They’re poking, gouging, twisting one another’s arms. The bedside table goes down and the ceramic lamp smashes. DVDs rain on them as they roll over and hit up against the shelving. Mam loses it. She’s hysterical. They don’t stop. They’re really hurting each other now. There’s blood and I don’t know whose it is.
My first instinct is to ring Brian, but I can’t. I’ll lose him if he sees this madness. Then I hear Angie. Actually hear her. A real voice from behind me. Ring Martin, she says. I turn for the door. Tom’s standing there holding his green tractor. His face is a blank. His blue eyes are dead. I sweep him up the stairs with me.
‘It’s a game, Tom,’ I keep telling him. ‘Only a game.’
I reach the house phone in the hallway. I scroll blindly for Martin’s number and eventually I find it.
‘Judy?’ Martin says.
‘Help us, Martin,’ I say. My eyes close. I feel Tom’s hand stroking my hair.
‘Jimmy bold,’ he says and I don’t tell him he’s wrong.
25
New Year’s Eve and for the first time in my life, I’m not at home to celebrate it. Mam had planned to have a party. Martin and a few others. Some people from her work, I supposed, and from the choir. And Miss Understanding, no doubt. After what happened to Argos, there was never going to be a party. Maybe the dog is lucky not to have another year to face into.
This is our first public outing together and it feels like everyone’s gaping at Brian and me. As loud as the crowded bar is, you can almost hear their slow brains ticking over when they look our way. The girls are probably thinking, He’s going out with her? As for the fellows – Derek among them – I can tell they’re going, Go, Brian, another notch on the gun!
I’m nursing my second cocktail. A Mojito, too green, too minty. Another first though I’m pretending, sure, I’ve tasted every cocktail out there, but I’m taking it handy tonight. My head’s already beginning to spin. It’s not the worst feeling in the world because the thinking part of my brain cuts out for minutes on end. Unfortunately, all the stuff I’m trying to forget comes back with a bigger bang when the spinning sensation passes. Sean killed the dog. He must have done it because Dad couldn’t have, could he? But I can’t be angry with him. I can’t kick him when he’s down.
After the fight and the little miracle Martin performed, Sean retreated to his bedroom. Something about the way he looked at me as he went, told me our secret, Dad’s secret, might not be safe with him for much longer. I got Tom ready for bed – Mam was still down in the sitting room with Martin. He wanted me to read for him. I told him a story instead. The first Terry the Tank adventure. The one where he wants to be a giraffe. I don’t know if he really got the connection between the long gun barrel and the giraffe’s long neck, but he liked the story anyway and I had to repeat the whole thing again. Well, two thirds of it. He fell asleep at the happy part where Terry is playing with all the giraffes and before they cop on that he’s really a tank.
I knocked back one of Dad’s panic tabs and went to Sean’s room. He didn’t answer when I knocked. Which, in his case, means it’s all right to go in there. The light was off, but the curtains weren’t drawn. The yellow sodium street lamp outside mellowed the blindness of the dark room. Sean lay on his bed.
‘You all right, Sean?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’ A deep intake of breath that said, Come in.
I closed the door behind me. I went to sit at the end of the bed, stepping over the clothes and books scattered around the floor. He has a new poster on the back of his door. A large-scale black and white sketch. In it, a man approaches wearing a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat that shadows his face. In the distance behind him, a young black boy stands, unsure whether or not to follow. The caption reads The Dead Man. Sean’s drawn a line through the word Dead. The poster made me uncomfortable, made me wonder what was going on in his head besides opening up to Mam.
‘How do you sleep with that guy staring at you?’ I said, trying to sound light-hearted.
He looked at the poster like he was seeing it for the first time, examining every detail or every detail you could see in that light.
�
��Did you ever read any of those Judge Dredd books Dad gave me?’
‘Do I look hormonally challenged?’
‘Judge Dredd is, like, one of these avenger types,’ he said and showed no sign of getting thick. ‘Judge, jury and executioner sort of thing.’
‘Is that why you’re stalking Clem Healy? So you can be judge, jury and –’
‘I never intended clocking him. I got this crazy idea into my head that I’d, like, haunt him like Dad’s haunted by the Man. But what’s the point? What’s the point in anything we do?’
The tablet was starting to work, but only on the outside. My hands were dead steady. I checked. Inside, I was shaking so much I had to fold my arms tight across my stomach.
‘So you’ve stopped following him?’
‘Yeah,’ he said and stared over at the poster. ‘The weird thing, the really weird thing, is that in this book, The Dead Man, Judge Dredd loses his memory. And get this, it was Dad’s favourite.’
‘Did he get it back?’
‘What?’
‘His memory; did Judge Dredd get his memory back?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. It’s fantasyland, remember?’
He massaged the ball of his shoulder as he lay there.
‘Did he hurt you?’
‘Naw,’ he said. ‘It was handbags really.’
I was thinking we never had a real conversation in our lives. None that didn’t descend into a squabble. But even if another argument was the result, I had to know if he planned to talk to Mam. I couldn’t let that happen.
‘D’you hear that?’ he said as I prepared to take the plunge. ‘It’s doing my head in. Dad’s too.’
I listened and heard nothing at first, which made me worry even more about my brother. Then I caught the faint sound of a half-hearted bark from Argos.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 15
